Chapter 20
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Houston
Scarlett waited on the pavement with the SUV running. The King Air was already parked. Drake had cut the engines and the airstair opened. Flint came down first. Patterson followed carrying a duffel over one shoulder. Drake was last. He raised the airstair and they crossed toward her.
All three looked tired and dirty. Patterson had blood on the front of his shirt.
They piled in. Flint took the passenger seat while Drake and Patterson got in the back.
“Let’s head to your safe house,” Flint said. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, and we won’t be interrupted there.”
“Works for me.” She put the SUV in gear and pulled away from the parking lot. “What happened while you were gone?”
“We found Cody and he’s still in one piece,” Flint teased.
“Yeah? I thought the guy in my back seat was a hologram,” she replied with a grin.
“We followed the sedan west on the interstate and then south on a county road to a private airstrip. Two men in the sedan with him and three more waiting at the strip with a plane,” Flint said, reporting only the facts the goons already knew because their team could be listening.
“One of the abductors got away on the plane,” Drake said.
“And the others?” Scarlett glanced across the cabin.
“Didn’t make it,” Flint replied, meeting her gaze with a pointed stare toward the head unit containing the SUV’s sound system.
She nodded. Although the SUV had been equipped with jamming tech to keep communications from leaking out, caution was always smart. The vehicle had been stolen and could have been compromised. She hadn’t had the time to get it checked.
They traveled in silence after that on the short drive through light traffic until she pulled into the garage at the safe house and lowered the overhead door. They got out and went inside through the kitchen door.
Drake put a pot of coffee on, and Flint stood at the kitchen window peering through the blinds. Patterson placed the duffel on the floor next to a chair and sat.
When the coffee finished, Flint brought the pot to the table along with four paper cups and took the chair across from Patterson. Scarlett sat on one end of the table and Drake took the other end, closest to the door.
When they were settled, Flint said. “Tell us what happened. Start with the trip to the airstrip. Then we’ll get to the rest.”
“They didn’t restrain me, which I thought was odd.
They locked the doors, though, and I couldn’t get out.
” Patterson rubbed his neck with one hand as if fatigue was catching up with him.
“They asked me some questions, but nothing noteworthy. It was like they were trying to keep me occupied instead of conducting any kind of interrogation. I figured they were waiting for that. You saw the rest. Near the end, they figured out I wasn’t Kyle. ”
“And they walked you to the plane anyway, even after they’d decided you weren’t Kyle,” Flint said.
“I think they were told to pick me up and deliver me, so they planned to sort it out later.” Patterson shrugged. “One of the goons survived and flew out. You took the others out. I didn’t have a weapon on me.”
“I’m guessing that wasn’t the end of it,” Scarlett said.
“The one that survived followed us to Langford.” Flint set his phone face down on the table. “He landed at a private strip nearby, so we didn’t see him until he reached us. He came in hot with a weapon.”
“Was he trying to abduct Patterson again?” Scarlett asked.
“Hard to say. We tried to ask him, but he wasn’t interested in talking,” Flint replied. “He aimed first and Cody put him down.”
Scarlett asked, “Do we need to get the body out of there?”
“Gaspar’s handling it. Probably already done,” Drake replied. “What’s in that envelope, Patterson?”
Patterson reached into his pocket and pulled out the manila envelope he’d retrieved from his rental. He emptied its contents on the table. “My brother sent this to me before he disappeared.”
Flint spread the contents across the table. A stack of photographs. A page of handwritten notes. A business card with a phone number written on the back. A small SIM card used to store information for a cell phone in a small plastic sleeve.
The top photograph showed a man in his mid-forties stepping out of a restaurant in daylight. Dark hair going gray at the temples. Ordinary looking. The next photograph showed him standing on a sidewalk, half-turned, talking to someone out of frame.
“That’s Craig Keane,” Flint said. “Why was Kyle taking photos of him?”
“My brother believed Keane killed his son, Walt,” Patterson said wearily, as if he’d told this story too many times before.
“Walt was in middle school when he died at a party. He and his friends bought drugs from his teacher. The pills were laced with high doses of fentanyl. Two other kids died the same way that same night. A fourth kid survived and identified the teacher. His name was Edward Quinn.”
Scarlett shuddered. Her daughter, Maddy, was seven. She couldn’t even imagine losing her, and she didn’t want to.
“What happened to Quinn?” Flint asked after a moment.
“He denied everything. The investigation took several weeks but eventually, the police arrested him and he was charged. Before the case got to trial, he fled the jurisdiction. The warrant’s still open.”
“That sucks, man,” Drake said, shaking his head. “Guys like Quinn need to rot in a cell forever. Three dead teens. What a scumbag.”
“My brother was obsessed with finding Quinn. He worked the case around the clock whenever he could. I was still with Carterville PD at the time, but I helped him when I could.” Patterson lifted the coffee cup and put it down again without drinking.
“We got nowhere. The trail went cold the day Quinn left town and nothing we did ever made a difference.”
Scarlett had heard too many stories like it over the years. Sometimes there was just nothing she could do. But she didn’t have to like it.
“Kyle’s wife left him. He retired from his job.
After that, he had time to do nothing but hunt for Edward Quinn.
So that’s what he did.” Patterson folded his hands on the table, took a deep breath, and continued.
“Until Kyle called me from San Diego, like I told you. He said he’d seen Quinn on the street.
He said Quinn was calling himself Craig Keane now.
That he worked commercial real estate in Texas.
He said Keane denied it, but Quinn’s lies were plain on his face. ”
“You believed Kyle’s story?” Flint cocked his head.
“I don’t know, to be honest. It was a long time ago.
I mean, what are the odds that Kyle just meets this guy on the sidewalk halfway across the country from Carterville, ten years later?
” Patterson shook his head slowly as if the idea were preposterous.
“Kyle wouldn’t let it go. He tracked Keane to Langford.
Got his home and business addresses. Got his private phone number, too. He took a bunch of photographs.”
“That’s not all, is it?” Scarlett asked.
Patterson tapped the envelope with his index finger.
“He confronted Keane. He called me from San Diego again. He said Keane had set up a meeting in Honolulu. He said he thought it was a trap, but he was going anyway. He said he’d mailed me this envelope and to open it if I didn’t hear from him in a few days.
I tried to argue him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. ”
“Was that the last time you heard from him?” Scarlett asked.
“Yeah. I waited a couple of weeks, but then I opened the envelope.”
Scarlett was sure he believed every word of what he said.
He could prove it, too, if it came to that.
Patterson was a retired cop, and he laid the facts out the way a cop would testify in court.
She’d interviewed plenty of cops over the years.
She was familiar with the pattern. Just the facts, stated in a dispassionate but specific way. Nothing missing. Nothing extra, either.
“And then the Gulfstream went down between San Diego and Honolulu,” Flint prodded.
“That’s right, but I didn’t know that at the time. Later, when I started looking at things myself, I found out there was no manifest. But news reports said Craig Keane and his wife died in the explosion. Two pilots, too.” Patterson glanced at Scarlett. “But you already know all of that.”
“Did you travel to Honolulu to find Kyle when you didn’t hear anything more from him?” Scarlett asked.
“I was still working then. So I used resources to check first. Came up empty. It seemed like Kyle never got there. No hotel, no rental, no record of him on any commercial flight in or out. He didn’t make it.
” Patterson looked at the envelope on the table.
“Later I figured that either he was on Keane’s plane and went down with it, or he never got on a plane at all. ”
Patterson picked up the digital photo frame. “This was on the mantel at the Keane house when I went in yesterday morning. I took it because I wanted to see more photos of Keane. I wanted to confirm that Keane was really Quinn. I thought more photos and different angles and lighting would show me.”
“Did that work?” Drake asked, leaning both forearms on the table.
Patterson set the frame down, shaking his head again. “I knew Quinn. Everybody in town knew him. Carterville is a small place. He lived four blocks from Kyle for years. We saw him at high school football games and the Fourth of July parade. We all thought we knew him.”
“People change,” Flint said.
“Ten years and gray hair and a different haircut. People can change a lot in ten years. These days we have better facial recognition, but it’s not infallible.
” Patterson nodded as he looked at the San Diego photograph again.
“And Kyle had been grieving for a long time. His wife moved away after they divorced and never came back. He drank. He was tired. A man can see what he wants to see.”
“You’re telling me your brother might have been wrong,” Flint said flatly.
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m sitting here.” Patterson pushed the photographs to the center of the table.
None of them had the full picture yet, but Patterson was missing facts the others knew.
“Oakley might shed some light on all of this,” Scarlett said.
“The woman who killed Dale?” Patterson stared. “You turned her over to HPD, right? She’s not likely to tell us anything, even if her lawyer would allow it.”
“Oakley asked me to meet her at the Lazy M. That’s why we went out there. We didn’t know you’d followed us.” Scarlett moved on instead of answering his question. “She was terrified. She thought you and Dale were someone else. That’s why she opened fire.”
“She’s saying she thought she was fighting for her life?” Patterson asked. “Claiming she killed Dale in self-defense?”
Scarlett could almost see the wheels turning in his head. A shooter’s intent reframes the charges. Patterson was in a similar situation a couple of hours ago and made the same choice.
“What kind of help did she want?”
“Cash. Her identity was stolen and the thieves wiped her out. Bank accounts, credit cards, property records, all of it. She said it was like she had simply ceased to exist,” Scarlett replied. “But that wasn’t all. She said the thieves also came after her. She believes they were trying to kill her.”
Patterson’s hand stilled on the table. “Which is why she wants the cash. To leave the country and find a place to hide?”
Drake said, “Like that ever works. Determined hunters can always find you. Ask Flint.”
Flint didn’t interrupt.
“Did she give you any specifics?” Patterson asked.
“The first thing was her credit card was declined when she tried to pay for surgery at a clinic in Europe. Her passport wouldn’t verify when she tried to book a flight home. Every account she tried to access and every piece of ID she attempted was denied.”
“So how’d she get back into the country?” Patterson asked.
“She’s resourceful. She said she bummed rides or stowed away on private ships all the way to Mexico. Then she hitchhiked until she got close enough to walk across the border into Texas.” Scarlett explained, watching his reactions as he absorbed the situation Oakley found herself in.
“That’s some sophisticated thievery right there,” Patterson said slowly, thinking it through. “Most identity thieves take a credit card or driver’s license, bleed the accounts, and move on. But this is a whole different level.”
“And if we believe her, you can see why it would be terrifying. She’s looking over her shoulder every minute of every day while simply trying to survive,” Scarlett said.
“You don’t believe her?” Drake asked.