When The Devil Whistles Page 11

  “What more do I need? You’re starting to sound just like the police. Bunch of masons.” His voice turned suspicious. “Are you a mason?”

  “A what?”

  “Don’t play dumb! You’re a free mason, aren’t you?”

  A free mason? Where did that come from? “Uh, no.”

  “You tell all your mason buddies down at the lodge that I’m on to them! I’ve been down to the docks. I’ve seen what Deep Seven is up to.”

  “And what’s that?” Connor half expected the answer to involve aliens or Nazis.

  “Tell them I’ve got pictures! I can prove what they were putting on that ship, the Grasp II. And I know about the Nazi submarine too. I heard those two talking about it in a bar. Granger and Jenkins. Got that on tape. And it’s all in a very safe place in case anything happens to me.”

  Connor smiled. Nazis it was. “Uh-huh. Can I see the pictures and listen to the tapes?”

  The man scoffed. “You just tell them.”

  Click.

  27

  ALLIE SAT ON THE EDGE OF THE DIRTY GREEN COUCH IN THE LOBBY OF Clayton Investigations, one of the firms Connor had recommended. Julian Clayton was a former police detective who had specialized in undercover homicide investigations for two decades before leaving the police force “because he wasn’t very rules-oriented,” as Connor had put it. Exactly what she was looking for.

  Clayton opened the door and motioned for Allie to come in. He was a handsome black man with a bald head, long beard, and piercing eyes—the sort of man who would have intrigued Allie if she had met him at a jazz concert but frightened her if she had met him on a deserted street.

  Once they were seated in his office, he pulled out a yellow notepad covered with crabbed handwriting. “There’s still one loose end, but otherwise I’m pretty much done with my investigation.”

  “And?”

  “The story you heard pretty much checks out. A kid named Jason Tompkins did die in Salina, Kansas last month. The cause of death was a methamphetamine overdose.” He handed her a picture of a boy with long brown hair, braces, and wide blue eyes. “That’s him.”

  She looked at the picture quickly, avoiding the eyes, and handed it back to him. “When did he die? What was the date?”

  He paused and regarded her with those burning eyes. “He was admitted to the hospital on May third. He died the next day.”

  So he was in the hospital the day after Erik’s band played in Salina. She wanted to throw up and then crawl into a hole. Why was she paying this guy to tell her things she didn’t want to know?

  All thought of telling Connor vanished. His words rang in her mind: If you commit a crime, you should pay the price. Every. Single. Time. No excuses, no compromises. He wouldn’t help her; he’d do everything he could to get her locked up.

  She forced her face to stay blank and nodded. “Okay. Sorry, go on.”

  “The local police are investigating. I don’t know whether they’ve got any leads, but I doubt it.”

  She examined her fingernails and kept her voice nonchalant. “Why’s that?”

  “Because of an article I found in the Salina Journal. It said no one saw Jason buy the meth that killed him. If there are no witnesses to a drug deal, it’s almost impossible to prosecute the dealer.”

  Allie looked up, doing her best to hide her relief. “Got it. Okay, anything else?”

  He looked through his notes for half a minute, then put the pad down. “That’s my entire report.”

  She stood. “Thanks, Julian. Just send me your final bill. I won’t need a written report or anything.”

  He didn’t get up. “Please sit down, Allie. We’re not quite done.”

  She sat, butterflies beginning to take flight in her stomach. “Oh, I thought you’d finished your report.”

  “I said there was a loose end.” There was iron in his voice and stone in his eyes.

  “The thing about nobody seeing the deal wasn’t it?”

  He shook his head slowly. “You were in Salina on May second.”

  Her brain froze and there was a roaring in her ears. “I don’t… I didn’t…”

  “I’ve known plenty of drug dealers, and you don’t fit the profile. You don’t use. You’re not in a gang. You’ve got no money problems.”

  She sat motionless, unable to think or speak.

  His face softened. “Allie, I don’t think you sold meth to Jason Tompkins. But I think you know who did. In fact, I don’t think you know. I know you know.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He leaned forward, rested his elbows on the desk, and steepled his fingers. “What am I going to do? Isn’t the real question what you’re going to do? A boy is dead and you know who sold the drugs that killed him. Are you going to cover for that person? Are you going to let him keep dealing? Maybe kill another kid?” He was talking fast, almost pleading with her. “Or are you going to do the right thing and call the Salina police?”

  “I—” Her voice shook and she took a deep breath to calm herself. “It’s not that simple.”

  A weary frown crossed his face. She thought she saw disgust in his look too. “Do you mean ‘simple’ or ‘easy’? It’s true that, depending on your role, there might be… consequences for you. But don’t you owe it to Jason Tompkins and his family to step up and do the right thing? Don’t you owe it to yourself?” He scribbled on the bottom of his notebook, tore off a scrap of paper and handed it to her. “Here’s the number of the Salina Police Department. Call them.”

  She took the slip of paper from him with numb fingers. But as she folded it and put it in her purse, she felt a fire flare to life deep inside. The ice in her brain melted and her face was suddenly hot. “Listen, I’m paying you to answer my questions, not play Oprah. If I wanted your advice, I would have asked, okay? I didn’t, so keep it to yourself. You gave me the info I wanted. We’re done now. Thanks. Bye. Send me the bill.”

  She got up and walked out, leaving him sitting at his desk with his notepad and his sanctimonious judgments about what she should and shouldn’t do.

  28

  EQUIPMENT AND MEN JAMMED THE ROV CONTROL ROOM ON THE GRASP II. A space designed for two or three men held five: Ed, Mitch, Cho, Mr. Lee, and Jenkins. Ed sat in a heavily duct-taped swivel chair with a steel Thermos, and a no-spill coffee mug at his elbow. Mitch perched on a stool beside him. Each man had an array of controls in front of him. Ed “flew” the ROV, controlling its multiple thrusters and keeping his eyes glued on the video input from Eileen’s cameras. Mitch would be responsible for the manipulator arm when the little robot reached the bottom. For now, he was mostly a second set of eyes watching the various data feeds from the ROV and the other equipment they had deployed.

  The other three men crowded around behind them, wedging themselves into the narrow space between Ed and Mitch’s backs and the overflowing steel cabinets bolted to the wall behind them. They all stared at the monitors showing live feeds from Eileen’s cameras.

  Right now, the video screens showed only dark water and occasional fish that swam through the cones of light cast by Eileen’s powerful lamps. The ROV hung motionless in the water almost five hundred feet below them, connected to the ship by a long tether that unspooled through a crane on the ship’s stern. She was about two hundred yards from the nearest crags of the underwater mountain range, waiting as Ed and Mitch readied their approach to the wreck.

  Ed jabbed a dirty, thick finger at a sonar printout that provided a workable map of the invisible terrain below. “I’m going to take her through here.” He traced a path between two massive boulders between the ROV’s current position and a long lozenge shape that lay at an angle on the mountainside.

  Mitch craned his head for a better view. “Currents?”

  Ed exhaled pungently. “Bad, but should be better in the lee of those boulders.”

  Mitch nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’m gonna need all my attention on the cameras to keep from crashing.
You watch everything else.”

  “Got it.”

  “All right, here we go.”

  Ed pushed the joystick on the ROV controller forward. The featureless black on the monitor didn’t change at first. Then flecks of something began to flow across the screen, and soon the ROV’s lights cast swirling, glowing cones like a car’s headlights driving through wind-blown fog.

  “Hitting some turbulence,” Ed announced. “Mitch, we okay so far?”

  Mitch glanced over the sonar readouts. “We’re good, but you’re coming up on something pretty soon. Looks like a—”

  Ed suddenly swore and Mitch jerked his gaze back to the monitor showing the camera view. A blurry close-up of a wall of rock.

  Ed invited the boulder to commit a number of obscene acts as he worked to move the ROV away from the rock and out of danger. He hunched over the joystick and stared at the monitor from less than a foot away. Dark rings grew in the armpits of his shirt.

  At last, the image of the boulder shrank and faded on the monitor. Ed leaned back, took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Well, that was fun. I think we fouled a propeller. Must’ve sucked a rock into one of the thrusters or something. Motor might be damaged too.” He pointed to the image on the screen, which had started quivering. “Looks like we picked up a shimmy.”

  Cho cleared his throat. “So we must stop and repair the ROV?”

  Ed shook his head. “Don’t have a spare forward motor on board. We’d have to order one and make port somewhere to pick it up. That would take weeks. Probably quicker to just go back to Oakland and get one from the warehouse.”

  “But without the motor—”

  “Who flies this thing, you or me?” Ed demanded, cutting off Cho.

  Mr. Lee leaned toward Cho and said something in Korean.

  Cho nodded. “Please proceed.”

  Ed grunted and turned back to the bank of monitors. “Okay, Eileen’s a little banged up in front. Everything else good to go, Mitch?”

  “Good to go, Ed. Gonna drop her over the top this time?”

  “Yeah. The current around those boulders was stronger than I expected. Better to just come straight down and take our chances.”

  They all watched silently as Ed maneuvered the ROV up to a point roughly a hundred feet above the target. “She’s still shaking some, but not bad.… Okay, we’re going down. Eighty feet. Sixty. Fifty—hitting that current again, but it’s steady. Forty. Current’s picking up. Mitch, watch our sonar. Twenty-five. Current’s not so steady anymore—getting some turbulence. Twenty. Fifteen. Lots of sediment, but we should be getting visual any second. Here’s the moment of truth.”

  “Jackpot!” Jenkins crowed as a shape appeared out of the glowing clouds of silt on the screen. The stern of a submarine.

  But there was something wrong with the picture on the screen. This was not the heavily corroded, narrow craft that Mitch had expected. It was too round, too big, and the propellers were intricately sculpted. This was nothing like any Nazi u-boat that Mitch had ever seen. Yet he had seen it before.

  Mitch’s mind raced. He recognized that wreck—but from where? Something he’d seen in a museum? During his stint in the Navy? On TV? He plumbed the dark waters of his memory, hunting for the answer.

  Ed moved Eileen over the top of the wrecked sub. Her conning tower, still intact, came into view. Then Ed tilted Eileen’s cameras down toward the wide deck in front of the tower. Pairs of large hatches punctuated the deck every few feet. The entire bow had been torn open like a Christmas cracker, its contents spilled out on the jagged rocky floor of the ravine.

  Colored wiring and bits of metal and plastic lay scattered like streamers and confetti. And resting in the middle of that glittering carpet was a haphazard scattering of massive tubes. Most were crushed, twisted, bent, or torn in two. But not all. Two or three looked undamaged, and a blunt object peeked from one.

  Typhoon. The word appeared in Mitch’s mind a split-second before he realized what it meant. Then everything clicked into place and he knew exactly what he was looking at.

  Mitch stared at the screen, hardly believing his eyes. Sweat prickled his palms and forehead. Electric tension hummed in his brain. He realized he was breathing fast and made an effort to slow down his respiration.

  No one had said anything. Maybe they didn’t recognize the wreck. He glanced around the room, gauging the reactions of the other men. Jenkins leaned at an awkward angle and craned his neck for a view of the screen. Ed’s face was an expressionless mask of focus as his hands danced over the ROV’s controls. Cho and Mr. Lee stood perfectly still, watching with bright, black eyes. Cho’s face was unreadable, but Mr. Lee’s eyes looked hungry and a slight smile curved the corners of his mouth.

  29

  CONNOR EASED HIMSELF INTO HIS USUAL CHAIR IN CONFERENCE ROOM 11436 at the California Department of Justice. Max Volusca sat on his right, a stack of documents and an interview outline in front of him. The witness sat across the table from Max with Carlos Alvarez at his side. Connor was a little surprised to see him handling another false claims case after his performance on the Hamilton Construction lawsuit. Apparently he’d managed to spin it into a success story. Well, Connor would be happy to help him add a similar line to his resumé for this case.

  The witness was Franklin Roh, whom Allie had identified as the IT chief at Deep Seven. Roh looked the part. He wore a conservative gray Brooks Brothers suit with a burgundy tie. His shirt was so stiffly starched that it looked like he was dressed in white cardboard. Designer glasses that would have been stylish ten years ago hid his almond eyes. His hair was suspiciously pure black despite the fact that he was at least fifty.

  Roh’s face was bland and expressionless. In fact, it was almost motionless except for the mechanical movements of his jaw as he sucked cherry cough drops.

  Max went through the preliminary background questions with his typical speed. Roh graduated from Seokyeong University in Seoul, South Korea, in 1976. He worked for the Korean Ministry of National Defense for ten years before emigrating to the United States and getting a master’s degree at MIT. Then he worked at Microsoft for a decade. In 2005, he accepted the position of chief information officer at Deep Seven.

  Once Max was through the preliminaries, he reached for the top document on his stack. Connor glanced at it, expecting to see one of the invoices Allie found. But instead he saw half a dozen lines identifying what appeared to be computer files.

  Max handed it to Roh. “Is this an accurate list of all the drives in Deep Seven’s computer system?”

  Roh looked at it for nearly a minute, long enough to read it several times. “It appears to be, yes.”

  Max nodded and checked an item off his interview outline. “And where do you keep customer billing and payment records?”

  Roh licked his lips quickly. His tongue was brilliant red from the cough drops. “Those are, ah, in multiple locations. I believe most are on the G drive.”

  Max jotted down a note. “Which server?”

  Again his crimson tongue darted around his mouth. “Number three.”

  Another scribble on the outline. “Anywhere else?”

  “I… I am not sure. Perhaps if you ask someone from accounting they can—”

  “Are there billing or payment records on that encrypted server, number —” Max hunted through his notes, but Connor kept his eyes on Roh. The man sat motionless, breathing rapidly. Sweat rings began to form in his armpits and his cheeks fluttered as he dissolved another cough drop in his mouth. Max found what he wanted and looked up. “Sorry about that. Server number four. Any customer billing or payment records there?”

  “Perhaps Korean. I mean, perhaps there are records from a Korean client. But no government money. None.” The words came tumbling out of Roh’s mouth, stumbling over each other in their haste to convince Max Volusca. “So there’s nothing for you to care about because there’s nothing government there.”

  The DAG stroked his second chin thoughtfully an
d looked at Roh for several seconds. Then he glanced down at his outline. “How often does Deep Seven back up its servers, and where do you keep the backup tapes?”

  Max then launched into a long series of questions about Deep Seven’s computer infrastructure. For some reason, he seemed to be trying to establish that CBI had seized every accounting database at Deep Seven. Roh recovered his composure after a few minutes, and soon Connor had to take notes to keep his mind from drifting. Come on, Max. Why are you screwing around with this stuff?

  Finally, Max pulled an invoice out of the stack of documents in front of him. Connor glanced over and recognized it as one of the ones Allie had found. Connor perked up and made a conscious effort not to smile.