Chapter Four #2
It was Tony’s on Tuesday night, late seating. Vic had been in the back corner booth closest to the kitchen door wearing a navy suit jacket, no tie, and a collar that was too loose. He’d held an untouched bourbon and pushed a ribeye around the plate instead of cutting it. He’d lost weight.
Leo had taken a stool at the bar. Vic had come over anyway and sat down uninvited. “I know we’re not friends, De Luca, but I need you to remember I asked you something.” He’d made Leo promise that if something happened, he wouldn’t believe the first version of the story.
Then Vic’s phone buzzed on the bar. Vic had glanced down at it, and something in his face had gone flat. He’d slid off the stool and walked out without finishing his bourbon.
Anja held up a hand. “Stop. The phone. Did you see the screen?”
Leo opened his eyes. “No. It was face down until he picked it up.”
“Did he say anything when he saw it?”
“No. His face did, though. All the color drained away. I wouldn’t classify it as scared. Tired, maybe. Or resigned. Whatever was on the screen was something he’d been expecting.”
“Did he leave cash on the bar?”
Leo paused. “Yes. A fifty under his glass. He hadn’t run a tab.”
She filed that. Cash meant Vic had walked into Tony’s planning not to be there long enough to settle a bill.
“One more question about the steakhouse. Did you notice anyone else paying attention to your conversation?”
Leo paused. “There was a man at the bar two stools down. Late fifties, brown suit, reading something on his phone. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. He was still there when Vic left and when I left.”
“Describe him. Hair, build, face, hands.”
“Medium height. Solid build. Gray at the temples. Clean-shaven. He had a tumbler of something clear in front of him, but I never saw him drink from it.”
Nobody sits at a bar for forty-five minutes not drinking, Anja thought, unless they’re working.
She kept her face neutral. “Okay. Excellent memory. That’s useful.”
“How? I can’t tell you his name or anything else about him.”
“You clocked him without realizing it, and that means your instincts were working even when your brain wasn’t. Don’t discount it.” She picked up her coffee and took a swallow.
“Did Vic call you? Text? Reach out any other way besides the mailer?”
“He left me a voicemail.”
“When?”
“Thursday. Late. I didn’t see it until I got home last night.
” He pushed up from the stool and crossed to the credenza without being asked this time, and she let him.
He came back with his phone in one hand and a folded sheet of printer paper in the other.
“I transcribed it, then printed it.” He thumbed the screen open, pulled up the voicemail, and turned the phone toward her. “Here.”
“You didn’t think to mention a dead man called you the night he died?”
“It happened. Then four other things transpired. It got buried.” He didn’t try to make it sound better than it was, which she appreciated, even as she filed the lapse away under things to watch for later. Civilians compartmentalized under stress. It was a gap, and gaps were how people got hurt.
She pressed play.
The muffled drone of a television came first, followed by Vic’s voice. She listened to the whole recording without moving, then played it again, and this time she closed her eyes.
The message cut off mid-syllable into dead air.
She opened her eyes and set the phone down gently.
“It cuts off.”
“Yes. He was interrupted. There was television chatter throughout the recording, and then a slight gasp before it just stopped. It was as if somebody had taken the phone out of his hand.”
Her thoughts too. She picked up the printout and unfolded it, lining the transcription up beside the phone, a dead man’s testimony rendered twice, once in his own ragged voice and once in Leo’s block print.
“He told you there’s more than what’s on the drive.”
“Yeah.”
“And he was about to tell you where it was.”
“Yeah.”
She looked up at him. “I want this audio backed up tonight, off your cell and onto something my office controls. It can’t disappear from three places simultaneously. Phones get lost or taken or end up in evidence lockers you can’t access for six months. Humor me.”
“Copy that.” He flashed her a faint, tired smile and forwarded the message to her.
“Someone took that phone out of his hand, Leo, and if they saw who he was talking to, then you are most definitely on their radar.”
Leo grimaced, and she instantly regretted saying it aloud.
“Now show me the envelope.”
Leo walked to the wall oven and pulled the door open. He lifted a padded mailer off the rack and set it down between them. Anja pulled a pair of nitrile gloves from her bag, snapped them on, and picked up the mailer.
“Uh, Anja? Fair warning. My fingerprints will be all over everything since it didn’t occur to me not to touch the items.”
“That’s okay. If needed, we can eliminate them.”
It was a standard padded shipping envelope, roughly letter size, sealed with its own adhesive strip.
The return address was handwritten in blue ballpoint in a slanting, rushed hand.
Victor Shaw. No street address. The destination was Leo’s office at Pinnacle, and the postmark stamp read Kansas City, Missouri, with yesterday’s date.
She turned it over in her hands. The envelope itself was generic, sold in boxes of fifty at any office supply store. Nothing that shouldn’t have been there.
“Who opened it?”
“I did. Letter opener, clean slit along the top.”
“I’m going to look inside now. If anything falls out of it, don’t touch it. Let me handle it.”
“Understood.”
She tilted the mailer and emptied the contents onto the counter. A folded sheet of paper slid out first, followed by a generic silver thumb drive and a cheap black flip phone, powered off.
She picked up the note first. It was written on hotel stationery from a mid-range chain, usually found in the desk drawer beside the Bible.
The writing on the page was the same slanted script, pressed hard on the downstrokes and shaky at the transitions.
She read it once, then again, more slowly, letting the specific word choices register.
Don’t take it to your own people.
She set the note down and looked up at Leo. He was watching her and waiting for a verdict.
“He’s right.”
“About what?”
“Not to go to the cops or the feds until we know what we’re looking at. But the part that matters most in this note is the phrase ‘your own people.’ He’s not telling you to distrust strangers, Leo. He’s telling you someone you know is part of this.”
Leo scrubbed both hands down his face. “I was hoping you’d tell me I was overreacting.”
“If I thought you were, I’d still be in Indiana, sitting around a campfire and drinking a bottle of Hoosier Gameday Lager.”
Silence lived between them for a breath. Outside the windows, the city glittered in all its lit-up glory. Inside, the only sound was the low hum of the refrigerator.
Anja picked up her phone. “I’m calling Tyler Redmond. He runs our cyber unit.”
“I’ve spent some time with him. The guy’s a freaking genius.”
“That he is,” she agreed. “He can crack that drive without leaving a paper trail.”
“Off the books?”
“For tonight. Depending on what’s on it, we might not be able to keep it that way past tomorrow, and I won’t try. I’ll have to loop my bosses in.”
“I trust you, so whatever you say.”
That innocent sentence shouldn’t have made her heart skip. It did anyway.
Ignoring her body’s reaction, she pressed Tyler’s contact button and activated the speaker.
Tyler’s sleepy voice picked up on the second ring. “Valkyrie? What’s up? Wi-Fi down in your apartment?”
“I’m in St. Louis, Tyler, and I need your help.”
Tyler’s tone shifted immediately into business mode. “Talk to me.”
Anja’s gaze passed from Leo to Vic Shaw’s note lying between them.
“I’ve got a handwritten letter from a dead sports agent, an encrypted thumb drive, a burner phone, and a warning not to trust anyone inside the firm where my client works. We’re running this on the down low, and we’re running it fast.”
“Got you. Give me five minutes to get to my office, then let’s go ruin someone’s evening.”
Preferably not ours, Anja hoped.