Chapter 34
After a brief break to freshen up, Athena met Bach in the interview room to settle on last-minute details. Paulson ran the booth. Mr. Smith wasn’t there on a Saturday, but the rest of Athena’s team squeezed in with John to watch the takedown.
Ice and Hernandez brought in Mora, who was wearing orange jail scrubs, his wrists cuffed in front of him. Despite looking scruffier than yesterday, he still carried himself like the man in charge. Her agents settled him into the opposite chair and took up sentinel posts inside the closed door.
“Sleep all right?” Bach asked.
“Like a bug in a rug,” Mora answered without an ounce of cheer. His keen brown eyes seemed colder, his face harder than before. “What do you want this time?”
“Mr. Mora,” Athena began, “you’re a smart man, a careful, deliberate man, a deep thinker who plans for every contingency. That doesn’t make you flawless.”
He closed his eyes, rolled his neck, then fixed his gaze on her. “Did you spend all night arriving at that conclusion? Your foundation doesn’t hide the dark circles under your eyes, Agent Bouvier.”
Athena’s jaw tightened, but she remained calm. I’m in charge of this interview, she reminded herself. “The list of charges against you has grown since last night, and the evidence to go with it. Detective Bach?” She glanced at Elyan and nodded.
He took out the witness’s sworn testimony. “Do you recall a coworker named Calvin Middleton?”
Mora scrunched his brow. “Stocky, short guy losing his hair? Yeah. I’ve seen him around.”
Bach nodded. “He’s seen you too, like at the small-order loading dock several months back at two in the morning helping strangers move barrels onto a flatbed that didn’t belong to Gulf Allied Chemicals.”
“Impossible.” Mora started to cross his arms but returned them to the table when the cuffs prevented the movement.
He jerked his chin, tension straining the muscles in his neck.
“I only work days. Cal must have been mistaken. Hard to make out faces in the dark. Besides, the only things I do on the loading dock are sweep and mop.”
“Rise Together Foundation.” Athena clipped out the words with clear precision and waited. Mora’s jaw ticked, his gaze hardening, but he said nothing. “Gael Andre Salcido Kuri?” His nostrils flared.
“Come on, Mora,” Bach said. “Your dead brother’s name, your mom’s maiden name? And you’re on the bank records as the representative of the ‘charity’ authorized to deposit and withdraw funds. Ringing any bells?”
He curled his lip. “Don’t say my brother’s name.”
“Hey, you’re the one who put it on the paperwork for the phony organization,” Athena said, gesturing at Mora.
“Rise Together isn’t phony,” he spat out. “It’s a legitimate foundation to support individual freedoms in an age of crushing domination by the elite.”
“I’ll bet they give out essays and pamphlets outlining your ideology,” Bach said. “It’s also a great place to launder money and hide assets from the IRS.”
“We hold nonprofit status.” His stalwart expression faltered. Finally, a crack in his facade.
“Nonprofit?” Bach gaped at Mora. “Two million dollars has flowed through an organization supposedly supporting individual freedoms. A simple audit will show us where that money really went.”
“You can’t prove anything.” He released the words like a stock line, void of the cocky attitude he’d displayed before.
“Actually, we can,” Athena declared. “And there’s more. Nolan’s blood on the floor mat in your pickup. Trace explosive residue was there as well, and in your empty lunch box. This ties you to the bomb and Nolan’s murder.”
“You’re lying,” he sneered, trying to cross his arms again.
A streak of anger flashed across his face when he couldn’t position them the way he wanted to.
He ground his teeth. “Did you find bomb-making supplies at my house? No. Did you discover a bloody wrench? No, you did not. Maybe you can prove I sold a batch of chemicals, but that’s it.
And once I call my lawyer, even that won’t stick. So, I think I’d like to phone him now.”
Athena couldn’t hide the triumphant smile that spread across her lips. She exchanged a charged look with Bach, who shuffled papers back into his folder.
“Certainly, you may call your attorney, Mr. Mora,” she said. “You’re now being charged with the murder of federal investigator Jeff Nolan. I’m sure Mr. Bach will file state charges against you for the bombing and deaths of three of your fellow employees. We have enough to put you away.”
“No, you don’t!” Mora railed at her. “What? What have you got? Some trace that could have made its way into my truck by any means? I don’t lock it in the company parking lot. No need to. You have not a shred of evidence to convict me of murder.”
It was Athena’s turn to smirk. A well-deserved smirk, if she thought so herself. “No one mentioned that the murder weapon was a wrench. Only the killer and our forensic team would have that information. You just gave yourself away.”
“No, I was just guessing,” he insisted, his fingers curling into fists. “Could have been a hammer or a lead pipe.”
“Too late to walk it back now,” Bach said. Then he turned to Athena, talking to her as if Mora wasn’t even in the room. “I thought you said he was brilliant. Then he makes such an amateur mistake.”
“Well, I thought he was smart,” Athena said, her attention on the detective. “He won that scholarship to MIT.”
Bach replied, “Maybe they felt sorry for him.”
“That, or he lost his edge.”
BANG!
Athena and Bach turned simultaneously toward Mora, his fists shaking on the table, his face red with rage. “Stop ignoring me! I’m right here.”
Bach blinked. “Didn’t he say he wanted a lawyer?”
“Yes, but a lot of good it’ll do him.”
“I said for you to address me!” Mora thundered.
Athena did. Drawing upon mythology’s Hera and history’s Bloody Mary, she assumed her coldest, most intimidating manner and tone. “We are the authorities here. You don’t tell us what to do.”
Bach turned the screw. “You’ll have someone else telling you what to do, what to wear, when to eat, and where to go for the rest of your life.”
“Damn!” Mora wiped his mouth, reining himself in, a skill Athena was certain he’d practiced. “Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered, shaking his head. A sly look had returned to his eyes by the time he lifted them to Athena.
“I was so careful.” Mora gave a humorless laugh.
“I never wanted to kill Nolan and honestly didn’t believe anyone else would be hurt.
But he got too close and was about to uncover my scheme.
I didn’t use a weapon from my toolbox at work—figured those would be confiscated.
Instead, I brought one from home and tossed it and the detonator where they’d never be found.
I built the bomb in a half-collapsed, abandoned building.
You never would’ve connected me to it. You’re right, Detective.
Mentioning the wrench was an amateur mistake.
That doesn’t diminish my intellect. It only confirms the truth—I’m not a criminal. ”
“You stole from your place of employment and killed four people,” Bach stated. “That makes you a criminal.”
Mora assumed a relaxed posture and inhaled a deep breath.
“Whitmore and his kind are the criminals. The powerful elite, hoarding all the wealth to themselves, with their boots on the necks of working people. And talk about dumb! With Booker’s help, I’ve been doing this for four years, and he hadn’t a clue. ”
“You needed Booker,” Athena asserted, “someone on the inside who could doctor the books, someone above suspicion. Booker was the perfect pawn. Funny how he didn’t amass nearly as much as you did.”
“Booker got a cut,” Mora said dismissively. “Mine was the greater risk, and don’t think it was just for me to get rich. Advancing my message and attracting more believers requires money. Booker spent his on his workers, saving some for retirement. I’m funneling mine into a global cause.”
“Global cause?” Bach questioned, tilting his head at Mora.
“They’re all in it together,” he explained.
“Or they’re all being controlled by the same entity.
You have to see it. Whether it’s here in the U.S.
or any other country, the powers that be keep their populations in a state of fear and uncertainty through wars, the economy, and sensationalizing tragedies and natural disasters.
Then they use the media to brainwash the public. ”
He scrunched his brow for an instant. “Or it could be the other way around. Media moguls could be pulling government officials’ strings. Either way, billionaires like Whitmore must be involved.”
Bach threw out a suggestion in jest. “Maybe it’s just a fat guy in his mother’s basement with his fingers on all the threads running the whole show.”
The look that overtook Mora’s features chilled Athena to the bone. “I hadn’t thought of it, but you could be right.” What disturbed her most was that some of what he said made sense in a twisted way.
“I have followers who will carry on my work,” Mora said. “People must wake up, take back their own sovereignty, stop drinking the Kool-Aid.”
“Mr. Mora, did you ever stop to think that those people you sold stolen chemicals to might use them in the manufacturing of illegal, addictive drugs or deadly weapons?” Athena said, pushing the disturbing thoughts of a deep-state conspiracy aside.
“Those bent on escaping their miserable lives through addiction are still going to do it, whether I sold chemicals to drug makers or not,” he rationalized. “The same for weapons. Fear and ignorance are the felons. I’m a freedom fighter.”
Athena sighed and exchanged a glance with Bach. She’d heard enough. Paulson had it all on record.
Bach answered, “We can’t arrest intangibles like fear and ignorance. But you …” He pinned Mora with a serious stare. “You, we can hold accountable.”
Victorious grins flashed around the situation room amid applause from her team when Athena and her sidekick reentered. “Way to go, boss. Detective,” Agent Howard cheered.
Athena allowed herself a satisfied smile. “It was a team effort. I just have to type up my report, send a note to Mr. Smith, and give the U.S. Attorney’s office the heads-up. Go. Enjoy your Valentine’s Day and all that mushy stuff.”
“I have to complete my report too,” Bach said, “notify the state prosecutor’s office.”
Karen passed a hopeful gaze from Elyan to Athena and bit her lip. “I don’t have any plans. I can stay and help.”
“What’s this?” Bach angled himself toward her, presenting a shocked expression. Then he tsked. “That simply won’t do. Let’s finish this paperwork, and then I’ll correct such a grievous oversight—if that’s acceptable to you, Agent Shoops.”
Caution blossomed into joy on Karen’s face. “Sure. That works.”
“OK, then, we’re out of here,” Paulson announced. “I’m more than ready to get home.”
Ice stopped, turning to Athena. “Don’t you need a ride somewhere?”
Bach answered with a smile and a hand gesture. “I’ll take the assistant special agent in charge where she needs to go once we wrap up the paperwork.”
“It’s been a pleasure,” Campbell called to the detective, and suddenly only the three of them remained.
“Let’s make sure everything’s airtight in our reports,” Athena instructed, feeling vibrant and itching to get home to Flash, “and then get the hell out of here.”