Danger Close (John Taylor #7) - Chapter 6

The brig was a small concrete building not far from the front entrance of the base, with an MP corporal on the door, and no windows. It actually reminded Taylor a little of the sheriff’s office, with its handful of cells and room with desks for the officers on duty. The only thing missing was the front counter.

The MP lieutenant was already inside, working on the thing that really kept the Army in business, paperwork. Taylor had managed to never wind up in the brig during his time, but he’d had plenty of his friends find their way into one for some minor offense or another. He knew enough to know there’d be intake form, forms for tracking personal possessions, reports for JAG, and probably more he’d never heard of.

“Ready for him,” the Lieutenant said when he looked up and saw them.

“Yep. Do you have a room for us?”

“Yeah, we have an interrogation room. It’s a single room though, no partition or anything.”

Some of the bigger bases’ brigs would be full-on police stations whose interrogation rooms would have attached observation rooms with one-way glass. This wasn’t that kind of place though. Any real trouble makers were usually held here long enough to be shipped out to somewhere like Fort Hood, where they were better equipped for prisoners.

“That’s fine, we were both going to go in anyway.”

The Lieutenant showed them to the interrogation room and then left to retrieve the prisoner. Taylor and Whitaker had done this enough times they didn’t need to discuss their strategy. Instead they just sat in silence, each thinking over what their steps would be, comfortable that the other one would do their part.

Taylor had been preoccupied with catching the guys who got away and then finding out why the guards on the door had been pulled off to get a good look at the guy before. He was amazingly average-looking, a little shorter than Taylor himself with short, close-cropped brown hair and a clean shave. He wasn’t disheveled or borderline on the grooming regs like a lot of the guys Taylor had seen end up in trouble with the MPs. Had Taylor walked by him on base, he wouldn’t have thought about the guy twice, he was that average looking. Of course, since he started working missing person cases and then with the FBI, Taylor had learned, time and again, that the worst offenders rarely looked like it.

He wasn’t in uniform, but he and Whitaker had already looked over the man’s file and knew he was a lance corporal. His military file and the civilian records Whitaker had pulled up of the man’s life before the Army showed no indication that he’d be involved in something like this. Other than a few tickets for speeding and non-moving violations, he’d never really crossed paths with law enforcement, in the service or on the outside.

His military record was about as bland as possible, with a couple of decent but not overly glowing performance reviews and the standard unit merits. He was currently assigned to logistics, driving forklifts and loading things into and out of warehouses, which could be why he’d been brought into the ring in the first place. He’d at least know where things were and help locate items to steal beforehand. Taylor had checked and he hadn’t been involved in the offloading of the cash, but since pretty much everyone in the base knew where it was, that wouldn’t have been the reason.

Taylor’s second thought was that maybe they’d used him on this because they needed his code to get into the building, but they’d had Chenier pull the access records for the building, and the man’s code hadn’t been used for that warehouse since the money showed up. More troubling was the fact that at the time of the break-in, no one’s code had been entered into the locks to get into the building. According to the computer security system, no one had entered the building before Taylor and Whitaker went in using the MP’s passcode.

“So Lance Corporal, do you want to tell me about the break-in?” Whitaker said.

She was using her ‘I’m your friend and not the person trying to put you in jail’ voice. Although most of the people on the other side of the table never actually believed she was on their side, it did set her apart for Taylor’s more direct, some would say asshole, approach. If the interrogations went long enough, they sometimes started to see her as an ally against Taylor, which was the point of their version of good cop, bad cop.

That of course, assumed the person on the other end of the table talked, which the Lance Corporal wasn’t doing.

“Corporal Evans … Can I call you Victor,” Whitaker continued. “You were trying to steal a large amount of money from the US Government and you’re looking at some serious charges.”

“Once the JAG lawyer gets here and starts laying out your article 121, things are going to go downhill fast,” Taylor said, taking over. “Considering the amount of money you were trying to steal, it’ll be Leavenworth for sure. Of course, that’s assuming they don’t try to tie all those bodies to you. It’s been sixty years since the Army executed anyone, but this might be the case that pushes them over the edge.”

Again, no response from Corporal Evans, who just sat staring straight ahead.

“Those were some pretty gruesome murders,” Whitaker said. “I didn’t serve, but I’ve looked into enough courts-martial to know they take the severity of the crime into account.”

“Do you think they’ll still go with the firing squad?” Taylor asked.

After a pause where Evans still didn’t reply, Whitaker tried to change tactics. “I understand you might have friends involved and don’t want to implicate them in all this. I don’t think I’d want to get my friends in trouble either, but anything you give us will help you when it comes time for sentencing. I’m not asking you to give up your friends, but you really do need to work with us a little bit. Tell us about how you got into the building?”

No answer.

“You know, if you really wanted to protect your friends,” Taylor said, “you’d tell us who they are. If we can pick them up in the barracks, it’ll be easy to do it safely, get everyone to come along peacefully. If we catch them in the middle of a job, like how we caught you, things can easily go south pretty quickly. I’ll tell you now, if we move in on them and they pull a piece, well, I’m still planning on going home after we finish this investigation. If it’s them or me, I’m telling you now, it’ll be bad for them.”

They kept at him for almost four hours. Questions, statements, threats, nothing seemed to work. They worked on him as a team, they switched off and let each work on him individually; they even gave Chenier a crack at him. Nothing they tried got them anywhere, which was a little surprising. While Taylor didn’t do a whole lot of these kinds of things, Whitaker was one of the better interrogators in the Bureau.

Even guys who remained tight-lipped in these situations usually said something. They asked for legal counsel, they denied their guilt, they cursed at their interrogators. What they didn’t do was sit completely still, not uttering a sound. He hadn’t even asked for a bathroom break yet.

“We’re not getting anywhere,” Taylor said outside of the interrogation room.

“No kidding. I can’t figure out what his deal is. Do you think he’s afraid of someone else in the organization? They threatened that other guy’s family member, right? The one they caught in the earlier investigation. Maybe they did the same here, told him ahead of time if he was caught so-and-so would be killed?”

“That guy started talking and then they got to him to threaten him. This guy just clammed up right away. Do you think they’ve started threatening everyone, working out each member’s weak point and letting them know what’s at stake if they talk? It’s pretty ruthless.”

“It also doesn’t make sense. They’ve been successful, but if you look at the tally of things taken, there haven’t been any huge scores worth that kind of thing. Hell, look at the file again. This went on for almost a year before anyone worked out there was a serious problem, because the thefts were so low value. If they were coming down that hard for this little gain, someone would have come forward. That kind of tactic always backfires eventually.”

“So we’re missing something still. That doesn’t really help us get this guy to talk.”

“Not yet, it doesn’t. I want to look into his background and see if I can figure out what they’ve threatened him with. If we can do that, we might be able to take that piece out of play and get him to open up.”

“You do that. By now the general will have heard about all the commotion, and will want an update.”

“Okay, meet me back at our quarters or whatever they are when you’re done.”

Taylor gave a nod and headed out, leaving Whitaker to deal with the Lieutenant. Of the two of them, she was the one more experienced with the actual day-to-day business of law enforcement.

“You certainly have stirred up my base, Sergeant,” the general said when Taylor was shown into his office.

“Not on purpose, General.”

“I know that and I approved the plan, I just wish it would have worked better and caused me fewer headaches.”

“I’d argue it worked exactly how we wanted it to. The bait worked and we managed to grab one of them in the process of trying to steal the money and the money is secure and will ship out tomorrow without a problem. Sure it could have gone better, but any plan has its challenges.”

“How goes it with the prisoner?”

“So far he hasn’t said a word, not even to ask for his JAG lawyer. He just stares ahead or at his hands and acts for all the world like a statue. We think he may have been threatened like the last witness. Whitaker’s going through his records now to try and find out what leverage they have on him and see if we can take it out of the equation and get him to talk.”

“That’s a long shot.”

“I know, but it’s what we have. Now that we have one of them, we’ll get something out of him eventually, even if he doesn’t mean to give it to us. These people may be good, but they don’t operate in a vacuum. They will have met together at some point, someone will have talked to a family member or girlfriend, the money they’ve been making will show up, something.”

“You certainly are optimistic, that surprises me. I’ve checked around on you, and from what I’ve heard, that’s not the word people would use to describe you.”

“No, it isn’t and I don’t think I’m being optimistic. I’ve worked a fair number of cases by now and my partner has worked a lot more than that. What both of us could tell you is that no criminal enterprise is water-tight. Something always leaks. All we need to do is figure out what that something is.”

“Well, then I guess we’ll just have to wait until you find a way to get this man to talk then.”

“No, we have other avenues to work on as well.”

“Really?”

“Yes. The attempt gave us two additional pieces of information. One, it tells us they have someone who has access to the other investigations, somehow. Maybe one of the MPs, maybe someone on your staff, I don’t know yet. They skipped every piece of bait we handed out until now. No matter how big the prize was, they wouldn’t have gone after it if they knew for sure it was a trap. I’m pretty sure the only reason they didn’t was because only you, I and Whitaker knew what was happening. Knowing that, we know we can start looking at everyone who had access to the previous investigation, and find the leak.”

“That makes sense I guess. Chenier had similar thoughts and put a lot of manpower into finding the leak, but he hasn’t had much luck yet. I’m not sure what you’d do that he isn’t.”

“Maybe nothing, but that’s also where the second point comes in. The warehouse was secured! They got in anyway, but no one’s code was entered. We can start by finding out how they did that. Then there’s the call to the men stationed outside the door, ordering them to head to the gate. It was made using someone else’s voice, and it was convincing enough that none one the men questioned it. There are half a dozen things in that worth investigating. As far as I’m aware, Chenier hasn’t had that kind of specific avenues in his investigations yet, just a general feeling that someone is talking.”

“Okay, so you’re not at a dead end.”

“Not yet, but the best way is still to get to Corporal Evans. The other things will get us a new name, but Evans is a part of the ring. He’ll be able to tell us specifics we won’t get unless we pick someone else up. I’m still pretty confident we’ll break him.

“I hope you’re right, Agent Taylor. I appreciate the briefing and hope you have more success than we’ve had so far.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Taylor said, giving a casual, two-fingered salute before turning and leaving the office.

Opening the door to leave the administrative complex, Taylor almost tripped over the DOD inspector, Davis, who was walking in just as Taylor was leaving.

“Taylor, I’ve been looking for you,” the shorter man, suited man said.

“I’m a little busy right now, Davis.”

“I know you are, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I made it clear when you got here that I wanted you to keep me in the loop. Now I find out that you went around me to the Secretary to bring that money shipment here as some kind of bait?”

“It was a need to know operation. There’ve been a lot of leaks around here and we needed to keep the circle small to make sure they didn’t find out we were behind it.”

“Since you’re clearly a little slow, let me say this in a way you can understand. I don’t care what you do, I need to know. You are required to keep me apprised of every aspect of your investigation, do you understand?”

“I’m sorry? Are you under the impression you’re somewhere in my chain of command? I don’t answer to you. I agreed to keep you in the loop as much as I could, but that’s a courtesy. I don’t have to do shit if I don’t want to. If you have a problem with that, you can call the person who sent me here. You’ll find her at a big house on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC.”

“I know you think you’re hot shit and insulated by your friendship with the president, but a lot of people are watching what’s going on here. Everyone has to bend to political realities and if you screw this up, you’re going to answer for it, regardless of who your friends are.”

“We have a member of the Black Market Ring sitting in the brig at this moment and none of the money was taken, so it seems like I haven’t screwed anything up yet.”

“You will and I’ll be there when you do.”

“Good for you,” Taylor said, stepping around the man and walking away without looking back.

Despite what he told the general, it would take time to track down exactly how the black marketeers had managed to get into the building so easily. While it sounds great to wake everyone up and get what they needed now, Taylor knew that wouldn’t work.

First, he was completely wiped out. They’d already been up all night and it was still hours until daylight.

Second, any of the people they needed to help with this, including techs and MPs here on base, techs back at Quantico, and the few people Taylor needed to talk to would all be asleep or, with the people here on base, running on empty. While he was out, Whitaker put in the requests she needed for data, so there wasn’t much they could do until morning, when they could start making calls.

By the time Tyalor finished sending messages setting up the calls he needed the next morning, Whitaker was already passed out on one of the cots in the back of the shed. Taylor was out a few minutes behind her, knowing he’d have to be up in five hours to keep trying to find how they’d managed to get through the system.

Whitaker was already deep in research when he Taylor got up, so he started the work on finding their leak. Eventually, he’d need to bring in tech people, but since anyone here on base could be the person they were looking for, he couldn’t just go in blind. Which meant homework.

He started by making calls to General Leland’s aid, who Taylor had notified that he would be calling the night before. Even though they were working for the president, generals were busy people and didn’t have time to deal with routine stuff that they’d farm out to staff anyways. Taylor preferred to skip the middle man and go right to the person who’d be sending them their information.

He’d started by requisitioning operations manuals for the base, specifically those governing securing warehouses. From there he started drilling down into technical documents, getting a sense for how the system worked. Not the specifics, they were beyond his expertise. After almost four hours of looking at the most boring text Taylor had ever read, he closed the files and leaned back, rubbing his eyes.

“Any luck finding the leverage on our guy?” Taylor asked Whitaker, who was still diligently working at the computer the general had set up for her.

“Maybe. His parents have passed and he has no siblings, but he does have a goddaughter. She’s twelve and lives in Nebraska, where he’s from. As far as I can tell, she’s the daughter of one of his childhood friends. He calls them once a week or so and from his emails, they’re all pretty close. I’m not sold that his friend would be enough to get him to keep quiet, but she seems the best bet. I couldn’t find any girlfriends or anyone else that would elicit that kind of silence.”

“Okay, so let’s roll with it. No matter how disciplined he’s being, if we hit the nail on the head, he’ll have a reaction. If we miss, we keep looking till we find it.”

“Works for me,” Whitaker said.

They weren’t far from the brig and decided to walk there instead of taking the staff can they’d requisitioned. The MP Lieutenant was gone when they arrived. Instead the office held a sergeant and two privates, which Taylor assumed was the morning shift.

“We need to see the prisoner.”

“Sure thing. The LT said you two might be stopping by,” he said, getting up and grabbing a set of keys.

They followed him through the desks to the door that didn’t lead to interrogation, which was revealed to house several small cells. As soon as the door to the office opened, the Sergeant swore and ran back to his desk, picking up the phone.

Inside one of the cells was a gruesome mess. Someone had gone at the prisoner with what was probably a knife, considering the deep slashes and stub marks too large to be a razor or something small. The entire floor of the small cell was one solid pool of sticky blood, already starting to dry. The pictures of the murder scenes hadn’t been anywhere this gruesome, with cutthroats or single stabs to the heart. This was something different. Taylor wasn’t an expert in crime scene analysis like Whitaker was, but it was impossible to miss the violence and anger behind Corporal Evans’s murder. He was ripped apart to such a degree it almost looked like a mauling by a wild animal.

“How,” Whitaker asked, standing next to Taylor. “How the hell did they get in here?”

“That’s a damn good question. Sergeant!” Taylor bellowed at the man who was just hanging up the phone. “I’m assuming you called this in and you’re getting your superiors in here?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“When’s the last time you checked on the prisoner?”

“When I picked up the tray from his dinner about an hour ago. Unless a prisoner is on suicide watch we don’t go in unless we need something from them, except for meals and bed checks.”

“I’m assuming he was fine?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Taylor looked in the holding cells and saw a metal door that looked to lead outside.

“What’s with the side door?”

“It’s how we take prisoners in and out, so they don’t have to come through the office. It allows us better control of prisoners, especially if they’re combative.”

“I assume it’s locked and has an alarm?”

“Yes, Sir. Key code access on the outside only. Even if the alarm is disabled, we still get notified out here if the door is opened.”

Taylor looked at Whitaker, who gave him the same knowing expression. Chenier and his people would tear through the MPs trying to find out how this happened, but it wasn’t a mystery to either Taylor or Whitaker. Whoever got the black marketeers into the warehouse without leaving a trace of their entry had almost certainly done the same thing here.

Taylor turned to give the MP sergeant his full attention while Whitaker went into the cells holding area to get a better look at the cells and body.

“Sergeant, did anyone, at any time, leave the building empty except for the prisoner? Maybe to go to the PX or mess?”

“No, Sir. Regs state that at least one man is to remain in the building at all times when a prisoner is present, and we followed that. Since I came on shift, there were at least two of us in here at all times, in fact.”

“Sir, you might want to look at this,” one of the privates said.

He was standing next to a bank of monitors, looking down at one of the screens. When Taylor got closer he could see the screens showed the feed from the camera inside the cells. There were three cameras, which was enough to cover such a small area, showing every inch of the holding area. On the screen was Evans, leaning in his cot, looking up at the wall, apparently lost in thought. Taylor could still see movement, so it wasn’t a still image.

“What the hell?” the sergeant said.

“How often do you look at these monitors?”

“It’s kind of random. Unless there’s a reason to worry, we just look at them as we pass them, to see if everything looks okay.”

“When was the last time you looked?”

“I don’t know. It’s not something I really think about. I just glance at the monitor from time to time, make sure he’s still there and not doing anything he shouldn’t. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes ago.”

“Was he just sitting there like this, or doing something else?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I stopped and watched him maybe thirty minutes ago,” the private said. “He was up and pacing around. I remember it, cause he was taking like two steps and turning, taking two steps, like that. I remember thinking how useless it was to pace in there, ’cause it’s so empty.”

“Okay, so the loop is for a bigger chunk of time, maybe from earlier this morning. I’m going to need logs for every door into here, recordings of the video feed, and anything else like that you have.”

“Loops? You think someone broke into our system. Sir, I don’t …”

“Don’t worry about what I think Sergeant, just get me those records. You’re going to have your hands full for a while dealing with this. Your Lieutenant, Captain Chenier, the general and eventually an army of JAG lawyers are going to want to know how a prisoner died on your watch. It’s in your best interest to cooperate and get us what we need. The sooner we have that, the sooner we can find out how they managed to get past you, which will give your superiors something to worry about other than how fast they can bust a sergeant down to a PFC.”

“Yes, Sir,” the man said, giving orders to the privates with him on where and how to get the records Taylor asked for.

Taylor left the sergeant and went into the cells, where Whitaker was crouched down, looking over the body through the bars, making sure not to touch anything.

“Bad news,” Taylor said. “They’ve somehow managed to get into the cameras as well as the doors and put the feed on a loop from some point earlier today. If you go out there, it looks like Evans is still alive and well, sitting on the bed.”

“That’s not a big shock. If they can fake door access, they can get access to the cameras. It’s all on the same system I think.”

“It is. Anything stands out on the body?”

“I’m not convinced this was done by the same person. We won’t know for sure until after an autopsy, but even I can tell the difference from here. Those cuts were all precise and efficient, where these seem frenzied. With the murders in town, every cut had a purpose, hitting something vital. Death was quick. Here, there are lots of slashes too shallow to hit organs and cuts in areas where there’s nothing vital.”

“Maybe he fought back.”

“Maybe, I can only see one hand from here, but there don’t look to be any defensive wounds. Like I said, this is all a guess until we get an autopsy, but at first glance, they look different.”

“Maybe they made it more gruesome to send a message?”

“Maybe,” Whitaker said, not sounding convinced.

Either way, the whole investigation had just gotten significantly harder.