Russell Andrews - Hades

"You know her?" Billy DiPezio asked incredulously.

"No. But I saw her. I saw her when I got out of Wanda's car the other day. She was right there."

"Jay, there are a lot of good-lookin' Asian women walkin' around these days."

"It was her. I know it. I'm telling you, I can feel it."

There was a pause, then Billy said, "I've known you too long not to at least listen when you get a feelin'. What else can you tell me about her?"

"Let me think about it for a little bit, see if I can conjure up more. I'll get back to you and give you whatever details I remember."

Billy agreed, then he said something he'd never said to Justin before. "You be careful, okay?"

Justin nodded, realized Billy couldn't see the nod. "This is a weird one, huh?"

"There's somethin' goin' on here, Jay, and I don't like it. And, worse, I don't understand it. There're usually dots and the problem is connecting 'em. But I don't even see the dots on this one."

"You be careful, too, okay?"

"Later," Billy said, and Justin clicked his cell phone off.

Billy was right, Justin knew. He'd put his finger right on the fat of the problem: People were dying all around them. Something was happening. But where were the damn dots?

Justin sat in his car and, as the ferry churned forward, he stared at the dirty blue water stretching out ahead for miles and miles. The water looked as if it could go on forever with no land and no end in sight, and Justin realized he might not mind all that much if it did.

Reggie had heard the news about the break-in and murder from Agent Fletcher by the time Justin had called to say he was about half an hour outside East End Harbor. By the time he was pulling into his driveway, she was waiting outside his front door.

The first thing they did when they were inside was use Justin's computer to go online and open the information that had come from Billy DiPezio. The shooter's name was Pietro Lambrasco, and the reason his prints were in the system was because he'd recently come into the country, visiting from Italy, and had gone through customs. The norm was now to fingerprint anyone entering the country. He was visiting for pleasure rather than business, and his business was listed as salesman. There was nothing else of any use. Reggie immediately processed the name and the prints through the FBI system, which had a far wider range of links than did the Providence PD. She told Justin they'd have results within an hour.

He ran down what he'd learned at Melman Academy and from Vince Ellerbe, and when she asked about the yearbooks he dropped on his beat-up coffee table, all he said was "Can't explain it. Just wanted to know more about the guy's past."

"Well, I'm pretty much blind by now," Reggie said. "I've been going through all the LaSalle info you got from his office. I've also been trying to narrow down the search on Hades and Ali."

"And?" Before she could answer he said, "Hold on. Let me get a couple of beers. I spent the day drinking lemonade and it almost killed me."

He disappeared into the kitchen, came back with two open bottles, handed one to her. "Okay," he said, once he took a pull off the Sam Adams.

"Well, I don't have enough cross-references to come up with anything useful for either Hades or Ali, so that was a total bust. What I was able to do with the LaSalle info was try to break it down and see if it made any sense."

"Did it?"

"Not to me. But there are enough unique aspects to it that it will to somebody. We just have to find someone who can recognize the patterns, I think, or something else to match it all up against." He indicated for her to go on, and she pulled out a yellow legal pad that had pages of nearly illegible markings and scribbles.

"Jesus," he said, "your handwriting's worse than mine."

"So shoot me. No, forget I said that. Not a good phrase to use around you."

"Just tell me what you've got."

"More than anything else, it's the travel spots. I can't make sense of them. Ron LaSalle did very little traveling up until a year ago."

"That's about when he started his own company."

"The company started four months before that-that's when he left Rockworth. So for four months he's pretty stable at home."

"Could be just overseeing a new business. Recruiting, hiring, all that."

"No question. But then things really start escalating. Look, the first month he went to Florida, flew directly to Palm Beach. Comes back to Providence two days later. Then, not long after that, he goes to Holland, flies into Amsterdam. He makes two trips there. Then, gradually it picks up. First he goes to Canada, to Vancouver. Then he's out in Northern California. And then he really starts traveling heavily: to South America, Colombia. And New Zealand, Australia, Alaska, and Russia. The past three months, he made three trips to South Africa. He's gone almost every seven to ten days. And then it all stopped about three weeks before he died. He's home."

Justin nodded, absorbing the geographical locations. "They don't mean anything to me."

"Me either. If there's a connection between all those spots, I don't see it."

"Did you see who got billed for these trips?"

"Yup. I cross-checked every one of them. The two trips to Amsterdam were billed to Ascension. So were the ones to California and Colombia. Which means we've got a direct financial connection. But then no more Ascension. After that, all the trips are billed to different companies. Seven or eight different names."

"Did you-"

"Yup, I tried finding them, but so far no luck."

"Not one of them?"

"No. I've requested an expert in this area, but I haven't heard back yet. I just don't have the know-how. And there are federal channels. I can't just go and try to get the SEC to do my job for me."

"How do we try to cut through all that?"

"I don't know. I told you, as hot as this is, we're still not the highest-level priority. And every time a bomb goes off in the Middle East-or anywhere, for that matter-we go lower on the priority list."

He indicated the papers she'd put together, organizing the information. "So what do you need to try to make sense of all this?"

"I need more information. Something I can compare it to. Why'd he go to all these countries, who was he talking to, what kinds of businesses, who was paying him after Ascension stopped? I'd also like to know if there's any matchup on the Ascension side."

"Such as?"

"Business crossovers, for instance. I'd like to see if Ascension does business with any of the other companies paying for LaSalle's trips. And I'd like to see if any of the places match up to any trips made by Evan Harmon or his associates."

"What else?"

"If we're being thorough, we should try to check the same things to see if anything matches up with Ellis St. John or even David Kelley or…"

"Or who?" he asked as her voice trailed off.

"Or Abby Harmon," she said.

He barely missed a beat in the rhythm of their conversation. But he was well aware that he did indeed miss it. "Meaning Abby could have been doing her husband's dirty work?"

"Or doing whatever she was doing behind his back, without his awareness. We have a connection between LaSalle and Harmon. It's tenuous, but it's there. Right now, it seems to be purely business and, until we know more, there's no reason to think it's anything but legal. But might as well check out whether there's a more personal connection, too, and that might come between LaSalle and Mrs. Harmon. She seems to connect to quite a few people."

"Okay," he said.

"Just okay?"

"Just okay. You have any ideas on how we can get any of this info?"

"Some. I'd like to make an in-person visit to the Ascension offices to begin with."

"It's too late now. Set it up for tomorrow morning. No, set it up for tomorrow afternoon if you can."