X-Ray
S hepherd Security had acquired a warehouse in a manufacturing area near O’Hare International Airport several years earlier, realizing a need for a location to sequester perps at that didn’t need to be transported to their isolation facility, the Silo.
While the warehouse was less secure than the Silo, it was closer and was a good choice for certain situations, such as this one.
Becca knew what kind of facility they were at when they rolled through the large garage door and it closed again before Eddie had put the van in park.
The problem was, given that she was an attorney, she was considered an officer of the court.
She had a duty to promote justice and uphold the law.
And accompanying a group of quasi-military, quasi-law enforcement officers to what amounted to a black site, where God knows what was about to take place, did not jibe with her duty.
No justice or the upholding of the law was going to take place in this building, she was sure.
But hopefully, the truth would be learned here, which wouldn’t happen in a police station.
These two men were going to lawyer up and not divulge who had sent them, why, or what they’d had in store for her, just as the man Carter had been forced to shoot at her sister’s house had.
The bad guys didn’t follow the law as the good guys were expected to.
That left a hell of a disparity between doing the right thing and stopping the bad guys, or in this case, even figuring out what the hell the bad guys were doing and why.
That was her mental justification for not speaking up about this.
Eddie exited the van and held her door open for her.
She stepped out and viewed the rough warehouse they were parked in.
There were metal walls, a cement floor, and rows of industrial lighting overhead that were suspended from metal beams. A chill invaded her, and it wasn’t because the temperature in there had to be at least twenty degrees cooler than the outside.
Eddie escorted her to the third metal door of four that were on the wall straight ahead.
Just like at their headquarters building, it required a code and palmprint scan to unlock the door.
He activated lights in the room and stepped in first, ushering her in.
There were three large windows with dark rooms beyond the glass, one on each wall.
He flipped switches on the control panel and lights activated in each of the three rooms, illuminating what could only be described as interrogation rooms.
“You’re a smart lady,” Winston said.
“You know exactly what’s going to go down here. If that’s a problem for you, speak up now and we’ll escort you back to HQ.”
Her gut tightened.
“I have to know what they’re going to say,” she said.
“We can get you the cliff notes later,” Winston said.
She shook her head. “No, I have to hear it all for myself.”
Winston nodded.
“You were warned.” He pointed to the windows.
“Two-way mirrors, and this room is soundproof. They won’t know who’s in here. No one will ever know who was in here watching the interrogations.”
“I won’t lie if I’m ever called to testify about it,” she said.
“That’s not ever going to happen,” Flores said, coming into the room behind her.
At the same time, there was movement in the room to her far left.
Carter and Jackson led in a man with a black hood over his head.
She recognized the clothing he wore.
It was James Standish.
They made him sit on a metal bench that was beside a metal table and chairs.
They snipped the zip tie binding his wrists, but attached him to the bench with the metal handcuffs that were secured to the bench.
He didn’t struggle at all.
Then they left the room, leaving him sitting alone, the hood still on his head.
Not that she felt empathy for James Standish, but she’d not be human if she didn’t put herself in anyone’s place who found themselves there.
It had to be terrifying.
“Have a seat,” Flores said to her, pointing to one of the three chairs in the room.
Then he left.
Moments later, Carter and Jackson brought another man into the room on the far right.
The one who’d been standing in front of her car.
They secured him the same as they had Standish.
He, too, was eerily compliant.
A few moments after, Flores and Robinson led in the man who’d stood in her doorway into the last room.
He was the only one of the three who violently struggled against them, cursing and yelling.
All the Shepherd Security men then entered the room Becca sat in; her elbows pulled in tight to her sides, her hands clasped in front of herself to ward off the chill.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Tessman said, seeing Becca in the room.
“I have to be, Carter,” she insisted.
He stepped in front of her and took hold of her hands.
They were cold. His eyes searched hers.
He saw determination in her return stare.
“If it’s too much, step back out into the warehouse.”
She nodded.
Then he removed the suit jacket he wore and draped it over her shoulders.
When he turned back around, he caught the knowing stares coming from the other men.
They’d figured out the relationship.
Jackson openly wore a smile.
Oh well. It was only a matter of time before everyone knew.
“Are you still on comms, Big Bear?” Flores asked.
“Roger that,” Shepherd confirmed.
“Becca, last chance,” he said.
“We both know what your duty is, and that this violates it.”
Becca’s heart thudded in her chest. “My duty is to get justice, and there can be no justice without the truth. This is the only way to get the truth. I have no conflict,” she declared.
“Very well. And just a reminder of the NDA you signed. This falls under it.”
“I understand,” Becca said.
“Team, continue. Needles, play the recording of Standish.”
A small monitor on the desktop came to life after Winston typed on the keyboard.
The interior of James Standish’s office displayed.
The tail end of Becca’s meeting with him was on the monitor.
It ran for a minute prior to her leaving the room.
The mic was so sensitive, it picked up her whispered warning to him that “this is not over.”
Watching it and hearing it, Becca was impressed with her own performance, as well as the depth of her confidence as she played it out.
She didn’t recognize herself.
Then, with her out of the room and the door closed, Standish grabbed his cell phone from his desk and hit dial what had to be a programmed-in contact.
“Yeah, we need to move on the lawyer. She was just in here and she knows too much.” He waited a beat and listened.
“No, she hasn’t put it all together yet.” He listened again.
“Do it! I don’t care! She’s living on borrowed time as it is. If your men had done their job,” he began, pacing and appearing agitated.
He stopped speaking, listening again.
“Tell them not to fail this time. We’re too close. She can’t fuck it up for us.”
Then Carter and Jackson entered the room, surprising James Standish with their unexpected presence.
Becca felt dizzy and knew she wasn’t breathing.
She sucked in a deep draw of the cold air in the room and became even more chilled.
No wonder Shepherd had ordered them to pick up Standish, too.
That conversation was damning.
Too bad it wasn’t admissible in court.
“Has Brielle figured out who he called?” Jackson asked.
“Negative, but his phone will tell us,” Shepherd said.
Tessman held it up. “Our first order of business will be to get it unlocked so we can see the call log and messages.”
“Do it,” Shepherd said.
“Moe, you and Jax take point with Standish.”
Becca watched the two men leave the room.
Carter barely made eye contact with her before he left.
She glanced over the control panel.
All the rooms showed the volume muted until Eddie flipped the switch on one of the rooms and she heard the unmistakable sound of a metal door opening and then closing in conjunction with both Carter and Jackson walking into the room James Standish was confined to.
The monitor that had displayed the footage from Standish’s office now showed the same scene she was viewing live through the window.
They were recording the interrogation.
Jackson pulled the bag off his head.
He was wild-eyed and confused.
First, they played for him the recording of his last exchange with her through his phone call being interrupted by Jackson and Carter entering his office.
Becca watched his face while he listened.
He went from being confused to scared.
“What happens in the next half hour in this room is up to you,” Tessman warned Standish.
“You tell the truth, and you leave here in protective custody. You lie and you may not leave alive.” During the four second walk into this room, he had hardened himself and tucked away the fact that Becca watched.
She’d chosen to stay.
He had a job to do and if she couldn’t handle seeing what they sometimes had to do, she didn’t belong working in their world.
It was better to know now, he told himself.
“You’re cops; you can’t do this?” Standish quivered.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Jackson said.
“Let’s start with something easy. Who did you call when Becca Elliot left your office?”
“I want to see a warrant. You bugged my office.”
Tessman fisted his right hand and slammed it into Standish’s abdomen.
Standish grunted loudly; the air being expelled from his lungs in response to the punch.
Standish slumped forward.
“Wrong answer number one,” Tessman said in a quiet growl.
He held Standish’s phone up in front of his face.
He watched it. No facial recognition lock on it.
It required a password.
“We’ll get it unlocked and see who you called. This is an opportunity to provide us with good faith.”
By the look on James Standish’s face, Becca could see he now recognized the trouble he was in.
She also saw the distinct expression that showed he’d never been punched before.
He was shocked it had happened.
Violence wasn’t his normal world.
How the hell had he crossed a line that put him into this world?
“Who did you call?” Tessman repeated.
“Please, they’ll kill me,” Standish pled.
Now they were getting somewhere.
“Like they killed Nick and Nicole DeSoto and their two children?” Tessman replied.
“Nick fucked up. He wasn’t careful enough. He killed them.”
Tessman wasn’t sure what that meant.
He knew that if it was confirmed that Nick had been involved with any of this, it would crush Becca.
“Explain.”
“I can’t. They will kill me,” Standish repeated.
“And we can save you. You tell us everything you know, and the Marshals will come through that door and take you into protective custody,” Jackson said.
“Oh no, they can’t. This is bigger than them,” Standish said.
“What’s the password for your phone? We’ll get it open, eventually. Why not save yourself a lot of pain?” Tessman said threateningly.
Watching from the control room, Becca no longer saw the baby-faced guy she’d met that first day.
Carter was intense. He was frightening.
“If you’re already a dead man, what does your help matter?” Jackson asked him.
“I want a deal in writing. That protection and no prosecution, full immunity. That’s the only way I cooperate,” Standish insisted.
“We’ll see what we can do,” Jackson said.
Then they both left the room, leaving Standish sitting alone.
His gaze darted all around the room.
“Now what?” Becca asked the other men.
“We let him sit and stew for a few hours while we go at the other two,” Flores said.
“Robinson, you’re with me.” The two men left the room as Jackson and Tessman re-entered.
Tessman let his gaze flick momentarily to Becca.
She avoided making eye contact with him.
He figured that she was still processing what took place in the room with Standish.
It hadn’t been too bad, not as bad as it could have gone.
His guess was that the interrogation of the two men who’d confronted her in the parking lot would be a hell of a lot more violent.
If he was right, they were paid muscle with no conscience.
Becca watched as Flores and Robinson entered the room of the man who’d been standing in front of her windshield, still sitting with the hood over his head.
The monitor on the desktop now displayed that room.
Flores ripped the hood from his face.
Unlike Standish, this man didn’t look afraid in the slightest, Becca noticed.
“Only one of you is going to get the deal with Standish,” Flores said.
“The question is, will it be you or your parking lot partner?”
The man didn’t reply, barely looked at either of the two men.
“Play it,” Flores said.
It only took Winston a few moments to isolate the exact parts of Standish’s recording.
Then he played the audio into the room.
First Standish’s phone call boomed through the room.
Then Standish demanding a deal in writing.
“Did he call you or your partner? Or your boss?” Flores asked.
“You’ve searched me. Did you find a phone?” he taunted, knowing they had not.
They’d searched both men and found no phones, no IDs, just guns, Heckler and Koch .
9mm on them both. They’d also ran both men’s prints.
So far, nothing had come back from the quick search.
Brielle was working on it from HQ.
But no one thought IDs would be found, just like they had not gotten IDs on the two from the DeSoto house.
“Keep him talking. I recognize his voice!” Becca said.
“From where?” Tessman asked, his focus now on Becca.
She shook her head.
“Your partner asked for a lawyer. Do you want one as well?” Robinson asked.
The man chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll take a law-yer. Rebecca Elliot will do. I’m sure she’s behind the mirror.”
“He was in my sister’s house the night I was attacked in the closet. I recognize his voice and the way he said lawyer,” Becca said.
“I’m sure of it.”
Everyone was still on comms. “Interesting request, given that you were there when your partner tried to kill her in the closet at her sister’s house a few nights ago. But you went out the back door when things got dicey,” Flores said.
“Left the two others to die or be arrested.”
“You have an active imagination and no proof,” the man said.
“I have rights. Now charge me or release me.”
“You’re assuming we’re the police,” Flores said with a laugh.
“Or we give a shit about your rights.”
“Who called you and ordered you to go after Rebecca Elliot in the parking lot?” Robinson asked.
The man shrugged but didn’t speak.
“Let’s start with your name and who you work for, then?” Robinson then asked.
Still no answers from the man.
“Who’s in charge of this clusterfuck?” Flores asked.
“Obviously something went sideways during this Op of yours.”
“What’s the big picture, or don’t you know? Foot soldier, I’d bet, not high enough on the food chain to have all the deets shared with you,” Robinson taunted.
Becca watched and listened.
They weren’t getting anywhere.
She wondered when they’d start beating on him.
“Last question, last chance,” Flores said.
“We know Nick DeSoto accidentally poisoned himself and his family. Was it a fatal exposure?”
Becca watched the man’s face as Flores asked that last question.
Either he didn’t know, or he was giving nothing away.
With no answer from the man, Robinson pulled his taser from his pocket and fired it at him, point blank.
The man convulsed, screamed, sounding more like an animal than a human.
His body lunged forward, the handcuffs all that kept him from crumpling all the way to the ground.
Becca was shocked to see it.
Her sharp intake of air and her body going rigid told everyone in the room how she felt about it.
Tessman wanted to go to her and wrap his arms around her, whisper that the man would be okay, but his feet were rooted in place.
Her eyes did dart to him as one of her hands raised to cover her mouth.
Tessman nodded, an attempt to silently convey his thoughts to her.
Leaving the man slumped forward, dangling from the bench, Flores and Robinson left the room and went to the room the other man from the parking lot was detained in.
Meanwhile, Winston marked different places in the audio at Shepherd’s prompting to do so, as heard through comms.
Leaving the hood over the man’s head, several sections of audio from both Standish and the other man from the parking lot that took snippets to make it sound more damning that it was were played.
The sound of that man screaming when he’d been tased was played last.
“Only one out of the three of you gets the full deal,” Flores said.
“Do you have anything to add to what they’ve said that would make you the contender?”
“Go fuck yourself!” the man yelled.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Flores replied.
“You do realize you’re a dead man if they think you told us anything. We’ll drop you off someplace very public, like back in the parking lot at Well-Life right in front of one of the security cameras as everyone is getting off work, shake your hand and thank you profusely for the info on who really killed the DeSoto family and why.”
“You don’t know jack-shit,” the man yelled.
“Move on from him. It’ll take a lot to get anything out of him,” Shepherd said.
“Go back to Standish with the offer and get more on tape from him to go at these two with. We need it all from both sides. Standish is scared, but not of these two.”
“Standish is getting an offer of immunity? No!” Becca argued.
“He’ll think he is,” Jackson said.
He winked and then he and Tessman left the room again, and they re-entered the room James Standish was held in.
Jackson immediately uncuffed Standish.
He pulled him over to the table and sat him in one of the chairs.
Jackson took the seat across from him, while Tessman stood behind Standish.
“I need two actionable items of intel for the offer to be solidified.”
Tessman held up Standish’s phone within Standish’s peripheral vision.
“The passcode into your phone would be the first.”
“I want the offer in writing,” Standish pressed.
“Good will gets it for you. We have one offer of immunity, you or one of those two assholes from the parking lot. But given that we have proof that at least one of them was at Nick and Nicole DeSoto’s house the night another one of them tried to kill Rebecca Elliot, we’re not inclined to want that immunity and protection to go to either of them if we can help it,” Tessman said.
“You know we’re going to get into the phone soon on our own. Buy yourself good will and provide your passcode,” Jackson pressed.
Standish provided it.
Tessman plugged it in and then took a seat at the table with them.
“Last call was to a contact named Chester. Who might that really be?”
Standish glared at him, knowing he had no other way out but to try to get immunity.
Tessman scrolled through the call log and the text log.
“You and Chester are tight. Fifteen calls back and forth in the last two weeks plus multiple text messages. Oh, Jimmy, this one is pretty damning,” Tessman said, shaking his head.
“It’s from the night Becca Elliot was attacked in the closet at her sister’s house. Chester told you she was there and not only did they not get what they were sent in for, but someone else crashed the party, and they lost two. Oops, that was us. And I’ll assume losing two meant two men. And your reply Jimmy, was not very nice. You said you didn’t give a rat’s ass how many he lost to get someone back in there ASAP, and stop that lawyer bitch from finding it.”
“So, Chester isn’t really a partner, per se. That sounds more like you are the one giving the orders.” Jackson concluded.
“Hum, and here we thought you were doing what you were under duress, caught up in something over your head that took on a life of its own by accident. That text paints a different picture for us.”
“Maybe we need to contact Chester with the offer of immunity to testify against you, Jimmy boy,” Tessman said.
“We have his number,” he said, holding up the phone.
“And soon we’ll know who he is.”
“You don’t want to do that. Chester is psycho, a real sociopath,” Standish said.
“And you weren’t too careful, Jimmy, leaving this on your phone,” Tessman said.
“Proof, you left it all there as proof to protect you from Chester, didn’t you?” Jackson asked.
“As I said, he’s no one anyone wants to mess with. I regret the day I accepted his call,” Standish said.
Then it all spilled out of his mouth.
The call from Chester came roughly six weeks before the plane crash that took out the only one of the three partners opposed to Well-Life Pharmaceuticals entering into the deal to research and develop the next generation of antipsychotic drugs, a new type of mood stabilizer to treat schizophrenia and bipolar.
Standish kept it from the other partners, though, that the drug had national security implications and that Chester was with a clandestine government agency.
Standish went on to explain that the ability of antipsychotics to cross the blood-brain barrier is crucial for their therapeutic effect, as they need to reach the central nervous system to block dopamine receptors and alleviate psychotic symptoms. Or in the case of the partner drug Chester needed Well-Life to develop, create the opposite effect, too.
They wanted to induce psychotic symptoms that would be used in conjunction with enhanced interrogation techniques.
The targeted drug and its anti-drug partner would be developed together.
Caustic chemicals were used, and unfortunately for Nick DeSoto, false data sheets were provided to him, labels were swapped in some situations, which minimized how dangerous the chemicals were.
The combinations he made created reactions never seen, and he accidentally poisoned himself merely by inhaling the fumes of the chemical reactions.
The toxic compound now in his body crossed the blood-brain barrier and attacked the central nervous system, resulting in headaches, the first symptom of the poisoning.
It was transmitted to the rest of his family through saliva.
Kissing his wife infected her.
Sharing drinks and food infected the two children.
It took weeks for the symptoms to present in all four of them.
By this time, Nick had figured out what happened, and he’d done enough digging to know he’d been lied to regarding the true toxic nature of the chemicals he’d been working with.
It had been no accident, as he was originally told by his manager.
At that point, the focus of his work became the development of an antidote for the poison.
And then Nicole confronted James Standish.
That was when they knew the DeSoto family wasn’t going to play ball and quietly allow the cover up.
Somehow, she’d even figured out that her parent’s plane crash was no accident.
Chester sent his men in the following evening and things went sideways.
The murder of everyone in the family was not premeditated, said Standish.
“Why was the entire house sanitized?” Tessman asked.
“They cleaned up everything but the bodies.”
“Yeah, we didn’t know how long the poison would remain active in the saliva. Chester’s team cleaned it up.”
“But the blood?” Jackson said.
“Police and crime scene procedure would keep everyone masked up and wearing gloves near the bodies. Potential for spread was minimal. Same for the coroner.”
“Chester’s people sanitized the scene?” Jackson asked.
“Of course they did. I don’t have those kinds of resources and none that would do that kind of job,” Standish said.
“Okay, so the million-dollar question. Who is Chester?” Tessman asked.
He was sure by now Shepherd would be running that name down and would be in communication with all of his intelligence agency contacts looking for him and trying to discover if the development of this drug was sanctioned or off the books.
Tessman knew one more thing.
Given that things had gone horribly wrong, resulting in the killing of a scientist and his entire family, heads would roll.
“I don’t know,” Standish said.
“I swear I don’t. When things went bad, I tried to track him down so I could go above his head to his boss. Do you think I wanted Nick, Nicole, and their kids to be poisoned and then killed?”
“You were sure willing to allow Becca Elliot to be killed,” Tessman reminded him.
“Everything was spinning out of control by then,” Standish said.
“So, you figured what’s one more person killed, huh? Anything to protect your secret,” Tessman spat.
“You’re not going to believe me, but I was against anyone being killed. I only found out about Madeline after Chester had already had her killed. Same with Nick and Nicole,” Standish said.
“You’re right, we don’t believe you,” Tessman said.
“What about the other partner, Marvin Ackman?” Jackson asked.
“He knew about and supported the partnership to develop the drug because it had the potential to make Well-Life a boatload of money, but he didn’t know about any of the rest of it,” Standish said.
Even though they had his entire confession recorded, Jackson handed him a pad of paper and told him to write it out.
Then they left the room.
“It’s time to get answers from the two parking lot goons,” Shepherd said.
“I’m running down Chester with my contacts, but so far nothing. Do what you have to do to get intel, team.”
“We’ll need you in with us, Needles,” Flores said to Winston.
“Door number two is the lucky winner.”
The three men entered the interrogation room with the man who’d been in Becca’s door, the man who struggled the most. He was still combative.
“You should step outside,” Tessman told Becca in a whisper.
“You’ve got your answers. You don’t need to see this.”
Becca shook her head.
She would later regret that she hadn’t left the room.
She watched Flores and Robinson grab the man, who still had the black hood over his head.
They forced him into a reclined position on the bench and then the bench itself was adjusted so his head was lower than his body.
He tried to struggle.
Flores punched him twice in the stomach.
Winston had opened a cabinet near the door and pulled out two jugs that looked to be about a gallon each.
He poured some of the fluid onto the black hood over the man’s face.
He sputtered and coughed.
A drain was on the floor beneath his head.
The water drained away.
“Chester, and what agency he and you work for?” Flores demanded.
Through coughs, the man yelled obscenities at them.
Becca watched it go on for some time.
It was one of the most horrific things she’d ever witnessed.
Water was poured over the hood.
The man coughed and sputtered.
Every few seconds, the hood was partially removed, just lifted over his mouth and nose and he was allowed to breathe for a few seconds before it was repeated.
All throughout, he strained against the restraints which held him to the bench.
When he’d gone still and quiet, he was checked to be sure he was breathing.
Twice, he was rolled to his side, and they helped him to cough up or vomit the water he’d either swallowed or aspirated into his lungs.
Becca believed he’d stopped breathing several times.
He had drowned. And Eddie Winston brought him back each time, only for the torture to be repeated.
But he did talk in the end.
The man’s name was Sergio Lopez.
His parking lot partner was Gustavo Chavez.
Both were in the country illegally from Mexico.
Chester’s real name was Jude Ross.
He was, by the man’s definition, a sleazy CIA Agent who operated over the line.
They and many others were paid well by Ross, a private army.
They were both present at the DeSoto house with Chester the night the family was killed.
Both of the men were at the DeSoto house the night Becca was attacked.
They had already ransacked Becca’s house before going to the DeSoto house that night.
The other shocking piece of information they learned from him was that not only had the drugs been developed to induce psychotic symptoms to use with enhanced interrogation methods, Ross also planned to taint standard drugs with it and then sell it and the counteragent to reverse the effects, which would be a gold mine.
Imagine a high so good it lasted until a counteragent stopped it.
Addicts would sell their souls to acquire a drug like that.
The potential to influence and control someone had limitless possibilities, and Jude Ross was going to tap into it and exploit anyone he could.
Shepherd only spoke when it was done.
“Good work team. Keep your detainees secure. I’ve already contacted Mason. He’ll send agents to take custody of the three you have. Moe, it’s time to transport Miss Elliot back to HQ before they arrive. We’ll debrief tomorrow at zero nine hundred.”