Дэвид Балдаччи - Redemption

“It’s a list of forty cities across the country. There’s an X next to each city.”

He pointed to the maps on the wall. “These documents might correspond to the red and green pins on those maps. Looks like they have pretty much every major metro area covered.”

He picked up another piece of paper. “This reads like someone’s bio. Birth information, background. Work experience. Marital status.”

He looked down at the bottom of the page. He read off, “Gardiner and Associates.”

Lancaster said, “Brad Gardiner?”

“Well, he runs a job placement business.”

“But that’s not illegal,” said Mars. He looked around the space. “Now this place definitely looks illegal.”

“Whether it’s illegal or not depends on who you’re placing in those jobs,” said Decker.

He looked over at the gurney and surgical instruments. “That’s obviously to change someone’s appearance. The clothes, wigs, fake IDs, credit cards, passports, birth certificates, and fabricated backgrounds all work to complete a new identity. And then Brad Gardiner places them in positions around the country. And he’s not placing people as waiters or maids. He’s placing them in finance, the high-tech field, lobbying, government, and other sectors. That’s what Mitzi said.”

“Yeah, but what sorts of people?” asked Lancaster. Decker looked around the room. “People created here?”

“But they must have experience in those fields,” said Mars. “I mean, you can’t walk into Goldman Sachs or Google or GE or the U.S. government without knowing what you’re doing.”

“Oh, I’m sure they know what they’re doing,” said Decker. “And now we know this place wasn’t really just laundering money.”

“What do you mean?” asked Lancaster.

“They were laundering people.”

“What in the hell do you mean, you lost him?” said Lancaster.

She was staring at a pair of plainclothes detectives who she’d assigned to watch Bill Peyton’s apartment. They were back at the police station after thoroughly going over the lower-level room at the American Grill.

“He was there, Detective Lancaster,” said the larger of the pair. “And then he was gone.”

His partner added, “When you called and told us to bring him in, we knocked and knocked on the door. Then, when there was no answer, we forced the door and searched the whole place, top to bottom. There was no sign of him.”

“He lives in an apartment building,” said Decker. “Did you think to search the building?”

“But we had the front and back entrances covered.”

“He could have gone into another apartment when you came into the building, and then left while you were searching his place,” pointed out Decker. “If he was watching you watching him.”

“Well, I guess he could have,” said one of the detectives.

“There’s no guessing about it,” barked Lancaster. “He did.”

After the men left them, Lancaster said, “Idiots. We had him, Decker. We had him. And now, poof, he’s gone. You knew he was going to be on the security call list. That was supposed to flush him out. And then these morons lose him.”

“Vanishing people seems to be a recurring theme with this case,” said Decker sardonically.

“So now what?”

“We have a lot of information to process.”

“My team is collecting all the evidence from that underground room. It’s a ton. But the computers all are password protected. And my tech guy says the hard drives are clean. Which means everything is kept in some cloud somewhere that we can’t access.”

“But there’s other evidence in there. The IDs, the documents, and the rest.”

“You said they were laundering people?”

“The ‘trainees’ at the Grill. I think they came to Burlington to be processed. Given new identities, maybe some had their features changed through plastic surgery, then they were sent out into the world, probably at positions gotten for them by Brad Gardiner.”

“But for what purpose?”

“I don’t know.”

“And why Burlington, Ohio?”

“I think this has been going on for as long as the American Grill has been in business. That underground room would explain the need for the additional concrete and the way they tried to hide it during the construction process.”

“So David Katz was involved in this from the get-go?”

“I don’t see how he couldn’t be. And he paid off his loans early with fresh money.”

“And Bill Peyton?”

“He’s been there since the inception too. He had to know about the room. That’s why he disappeared. I think he’s a smart enough guy to see what we were doing. Using a ‘fire’ to get in and search the place.”

“But a smart defense counsel could get all the fruits of our search thrown out as tainted. We didn’t have a warrant and the fire explanation may not hold up at trial.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. But I’m less worried about that than I am about stopping what’s been going on here, Mary.”

“So why was David Katz killed? And the Richardses?”

“Bad guys kill other bad guys when they feel threatened. It could be that Katz wanted more money to do what he was doing. Or maybe he got cold feet and was thinking of going to the cops and telling them what was going on.”

“And the Richardses?”

“The banker told us that Don Richards was Katz’s go-to person there. Maybe the people behind this were afraid that Katz had told Richards too much. We’ve already speculated that Karl Stevens learned through his drug deals with Richards’s son about some communication between Katz and Richards. Stevens must have told someone and then they struck on the idea of pinning all this on Meryl Hawkins.”

“Because Stevens knew Mitzi.”

“Right. Hell, Stevens might have been the one to suggest pinning it on Hawkins. He certainly knew about Mitzi’s drug addiction and probably also about her mother and her need for pain meds. But Meryl wasn’t stupid. He must have figured out that his daughter set him up. But he didn’t know why. Maybe he just thought she’d gotten in trouble. He said nothing because he didn’t want to add to her grief, and to his wife’s.”

“But then he runs into Karl Stevens in prison. And Stevens maybe runs his mouth. He lets Hawkins know the truth, or close to it.”

“So he gets that tat of the arrow through his little star, symbolically killing his daughter. And comes back here trying to prove his innocence.”

“And somebody kills him,” said Lancaster. “But how would they have known what he was up to?”

“Stevens might have tipped off someone on the outside about Meryl getting out of prison. When he shows up back here, they decide they need to get rid of him before he can start making waves.”

“Fortunately, he reached us before they could kill him,” pointed out Lancaster.

“It won’t be fortunate if we can’t figure out the truth,” Decker retorted.

“So Gardiner and Peyton are both on the run. You think they’re going to hook up at some point?”

“Anything’s possible. Gardiner really outsmarted me. But the guy was scared, Mary. And he wasn’t scared of his wife, even though she was shooting at both of us.”

“He was scared because of the people he’s involved with.”

“Well, considering what they’ve done so far, who can blame him?”

His phone buzzed. It was Jamison.

“Hey, Alex, I’m a little busy ri—”

She interrupted, “The team’s coming to Burlington.”

“What? I thought you were in New Hampshire.”

“We were. But another case is suddenly taking precedence.”