Chapter 41
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Two weeks later
Houston
Flint stepped off the private elevator one floor below the top of Shaw Tower and crossed the granite floor to Black Haven’s steel door. He pressed his thumb to the reader. The lock released.
Scarlett was already inside at the long table, facing a large monitor and a laptop at her elbow. Her reading glasses were shoved on her head to hold the mane of curly hair out of her face.
“How long have you been here already?” Flint said. She shrugged. “We could have done this at your office or at my place.”
“You’ve forgotten the guy you had to kill in your alley?” She didn’t turn from the laptop screen. “They got past my office biometric locks, motion sensors, a ninety-second armed-response contract, and drove off in my own SUV.”
“Good point,” he grinned and joined her at the table. “I assume you’ll be handling those issues shortly?”
“Shaw’s people are rebuilding my system. Should be done next month,” she replied, applying the finishing touches to whatever she was working on. Finally, she glanced up, “Until then, you’ll find me here. No whining.”
He gave her a scowl. Borrowing so much as a paper clip from Baz Shaw was never Flint’s first choice. He preferred to keep a significant distance between his operations and anything Shaw could impact.
Scarlett felt differently about it. Flint had stopped speculating about her opinion a while ago. Some things were impossible to understand.
“Where’s Drake?” she asked.
“Some hottie invited him to the beach. He said to carry on without him. I didn’t think we needed him for this,” Flint replied as he settled into his seat across the table. “Let’s get started. I have a date with a certain seven-year-old and I can’t be late.”
“Yeah, well, you can take Maddy and that dog back to your place. Whiskers chewed through a second pair of my Louboutins and I’m about to throw them both out on the street.” Her words were harsh, but her tone was indulgent.
There was zero chance she’d do any of that and they both knew it. Shoes could be replaced. Maddy was the love of her life. So far.
He gave her a playful jab in return. “Did you a favor. You’ll break your neck wearing those heels.”
She was coming around on the puppy Flint had given Maddy without permission. He could feel it. “Schnauzer puppies chew everything, even the drywall, for the first couple of years. You should know that by now.”
She deepened the scowl and lowered her glasses to her nose. Before she had a chance to say more the big monitor came awake. Gaspar calling from his office in Coconut Grove. He looked like he hadn’t slept much. Situation normal.
By way of greeting, Gaspar raised his favorite mug, certainly filled with the agave-sweetened Cuban coffee he preferred. “The two Pattersons are back in Carterville. I checked with Cody this morning. Kyle’s shoulder wound is healing. The bullet missed the bone.”
“Yeah, I talked to him, too. They’ll be okay. What about Locke’s bag?” Flint hadn’t briefed Scarlett yet. “Catch us up.”
“Most of the stuff was what you’d expect in a go-bag from a guy like that. Cash in several currencies, which probably tells us his travel route plans.” Gaspar took a pull of coffee. “He figured he’d need cash to get there. Three passports in three names for those same countries.”
“Learn anything from the contents of that shielded case with the zip drive in it?” Flint had found the case when he searched the bag before he’d turned it over to Gaspar.
“Took a minute. But it’s their plan B. Everything they needed to get back into the operation if they got locked out for any reason.
Credentials, keys, the whole nine yards.
Every name, every job, more than fourteen years of it.
” Gaspar paused to catch a breath. “And the method sitting right there with it, the actual technique.”
“What does all this mean?” Scarlett asked, frowning.
“Like a lot of discoveries, this one started as a fix for their own problems,” Flint said.
“Locke and Chu worked for the government once. They were sent to kill a terrorist. They did the job ruthlessly. They exploded a commercial jet liner over the North Atlantic with more than three hundred civilians on board.”
“I remember that. The World Airlines disaster.” Scarlett said. “The world was outraged, and rightfully so. You’re saying the bosses decided Locke and Chu would be sacrificed to cover up the operation?”
“Not sacrificed. They were no innocents. They knew destroying that airliner mid-flight was depraved. They didn’t care,” Flint replied. “Why shouldn’t they have paid for it? The real tragedy is that they didn’t face justice at the time.”
“Exactly,” Gaspar replied. “But before that had a chance to happen, they found a way to disappear. Created new lives in every system, public and private, world-wide. It’s not forgery or new paper records. It’s everything. Just like regular witness protection, but better.”
“Which meant they’ve been fugitives all these years,” Scarlett said.
“They knew they weren’t the only ones in the world who would find the system useful. They chose their clients carefully. The plan was to be wealthy as well as independent,” Flint said. “They didn’t need to search for clients. Certain kinds of scumbags practically lined up at the front door. “
“Wait,” Scarlett said. “I’m not sure I understand this. How is something like that even possible? There’s no aspect of modern life that isn’t recorded somewhere. We find people every day because they thought they were hiding but we can still see them.”
“If that were true, I’d be out of business.” Flint offered a knowing smile.
“Fair point,” Scarlett replied. “So what? These two were smarter than the entire world?”
“Knowledge and expertise evolve. Once, we all knew the earth was flat. It was obvious. We could see it. And now we know we were wrong.” Gaspar nodded on the screen. “John Chu discovered a flaw and exploited it.”
“What flaw?”
“All the files and databases we use, police, passports, banks, airports, hospitals and labs, government systems, all rely on math. Chu found the flaw in the underlying math the systems were built on,” Gaspar said.
“Figures lie, and liars figure,” Scarlett murmured.
“He could have won a Nobel Prize for it. Instead he used it to erase clients who paid him millions. He wiped out names, faces, whole histories, and built new ones. And nobody noticed because they never looked that far down. That was his genius.”
“Or he just got lucky and then exploited us all.” Scarlett shuddered. “Evil like that can’t be contained.”
“We’ll be turning it all over to the feds shortly. They’ll give it their best efforts. Some of Chu’s clients will be found and dealt with. That’s the best we can do.” Flint replied.
“It’ll take a while, but we’ll get there,” Gaspar said.
“Because all of the proof as well as Chu’s methods were not destroyed in Suratan.
Chu was too smart for that. He stored it all offshore on his private networks so they couldn’t be reached by unauthorized hackers.
The keys to access the whole system are on that zip drive. ”
Flint had heard Gaspar’s report earlier, but it was new intel to Scarlett. He gave her the space to reach her own conclusions. It didn’t take long.
“Edward Quinn was one of Chu’s clients,” Scarlett said flatly. “That’s how he became Craig Keane. And married Nancy Bishop. And lived a full life after he’d killed three kids and hospitalized a fourth with poisoned drugs.”
“Right,” Flint said. “But Keane’s done now, too, and we have Kyle Patterson to thank.”
Gaspar nodded. “It’s all there in Chu’s files. Chu’s team placed a bomb on the Gulfstream and detonated it at altitude over the Pacific. Same method as the World Airlines bombing.”
“You’re sure?”
“Craig Keane was definitely on the plane. There’s a photo of him seated in the cabin.” Gaspar put the photo on the screen so she could see for herself.
Keane was relaxed, a drink in his hand, smiling on his way to Honolulu. There was a date and time stamp on the photo. It was taken sixty seconds before the explosion.
“He died exactly the way it was reported. His body will never be found,” Scarlett confirmed. “I hope Kyle can accept that and get some closure finally.”
Flint thought about Kyle Patterson back in Indiana. They’d talked about Keane before the brothers left Houston.
“They told me Edward Quinn was long gone. For ten years I was the only one who believed otherwise, and I was right,” Kyle had said.
“They claimed Nancy Keane died on that Gulfstream, but she sat at Scarlett’s kitchen table drinking coffee two weeks ago.
My brother believed I was dead and here I am. ”
Flint couldn’t argue, so he’d said nothing.
Kyle had set down his cup. “Now you’re saying Craig Keane died for real on that plane. Maybe he did. I’ll go home to Carterville to mourn my son and his friends. I’ll sit on my porch, and every man I see who might be Quinn? I’ll look at him twice. For the rest of my life.”
Kyle Patterson’s skepticism was well founded. Chu and Locke were dead now, but new sociopaths would replace them. They always did. Flint wasn’t sure Kyle would ever fully trust anyone again.
Flint cleared his throat and changed the subject. Oakley had been bunking at Scarlett’s since they found her in El Paso. It was time to deal with her. “Do those files tell us who Scarlett’s houseguest really is?”
“Her DNA doesn’t. I’ll start there.” Gaspar set the cup down.
“Scarlett already checked the official databases, as you know. She asked me to run Oakley’s DNA profile against the public ancestry services.
To match her DNA, she needs a relative already in the system.
To make a long story short, she doesn’t have one.
Not yet anyway. These databases are growing constantly as more people submit to them, so I left the search running, just in case.
But it may never find a hit we can use to unravel Oakley with DNA. ”
“So another dead end,” Scarlett confirmed.
Gaspar put a record on the screen. “Locke’s people pulled Nancy Bishop Keane’s whole history. They got the sealed hospital chart the pathologist wouldn’t release to Scarlett. I found this.” A birth date showed on the screen, circled. “The hospital record says Nancy Bishop was born February 29th.”
Scarlett went still. She set down her pen. “Say that again.”
“And all of Nancy Bishop’s records prior to her overdose list her birthday as February 28th,” Gaspar said. “You didn’t notice it because you focused on her records after the overdose and before the Gulfstream explosion. Those post-overdose records consistently show her birthday as February 29th.”
The room was quiet while Scarlett internalized the facts.
“There was a girl at the Lazy M born on a leap day.” Scarlett wasn’t looking at the screen now. “The boys teased her for it. Said she’d only had three real birthdays by the time she was twelve. Called her a baby. She threw rocks at them. That was Nora Weiss. Nora was born February 29th.”
“We went back to El Paso. Tracked down the facts on the overdose situation,” Flint leaned forward to explain.
“Nobody at that hospital knew either of them. Two women came in by ambulance the same night, both unconscious, no ID on either one. The bartender knew them as regulars, Nancy and Nora. First names only. In the chaos, he got it backwards or the paramedics heard it wrong. We can’t say for sure. But the names got switched.”
“Meaning the hospital had two unconscious women and two first names hung on the wrong ones from the start,” Scarlett set the pen down. “You don’t invent your own birthday lying in a hospital bed barely conscious. When they ask you your birthdate, you give the real one without thinking.”
“That’s my take on it,” Flint replied.
Scarlett nodded, talking it through. “The name was wrong. The birthday was true. February 29th went onto Nancy Bishop’s chart that day, and it stayed on every record since. The real Nancy Bishop was born on February 28th. Oakley was born on February 29th. She’s Nora Weiss.”
“And the birthdate on the dead girl’s death certificate was filled in later, by the county.
Fentanyl was killing people down there faster than they could write it up.
They ran the name against local records.
Found a Nancy Bishop, right age, no family to ask.
They took the birth date off Nancy Bishop’s birth certificate, or her driver’s license, or whatever they had.
” Gaspar summed it up. “The names were already crossed and the birth dates crossed with them.”
“Human error. Plain and simple,” Flint said.
“For want of a nail,” Scarlett murmured.
“We’ll never be able to prove it,” Flint reminded them.
“We don’t need to. We’ll ask her.” Scarlett crossed to a side door leading to a smaller conference room and invited her to join them.