James Born - Shock Wave

Tasker flipped out his identification.

Baby leaned over to look at the official credentials. He nodded and said, “You know I had a little trouble with the cops the other night over at the Last Chance Saloon.”

“That’s rough,” said Tasker, then held up the photograph again. “Did this man, Wells or Westerly, ever talk to you?”

“I coulda stayed if ya’ll didn’t have them batons and pepper spray.”

“I’m sure. Now about this man.”

“You two wouldn’t even get my attention other than to make sure one of you didn’t get stuck under my shoe.”

Tasker smiled and said, “You’re probably right. When is his next lesson?”

Baby seemed frustrated in his failure to provoke a fight. As Tasker looked at his partner, so did Sutter. His hand had subtly reached around to the ASP he kept in his back pocket. Tasker shook his head slightly. He already had his hand on his own ASP.

Baby pointed at Wells’ photo and said, “What’d he do, anyway?”

Tasker didn’t miss a beat. “He may have molested a child. That’s why we need to talk to him.”

Baby’s eyes widened. “A girl or boy?”

“Does it matter? It was a child.”

“You’re right, you’re right, it don’t matter. He just left a couple of hours ago, and I don’t think he’ll be coming back. He had no aptitude for this at all.”

“He say why he wanted to learn?”

“Naw, just that it was his dream. If ya’ll wait a minute, I’ll get his file. See what we can find out.” Baby started to hustle toward the office. He looked over his shoulder down toward Tasker and Sutter trying to keep pace. “A child molester, that’s low. I hope you catch that nasty sumbitch. That just makes me sick.”

Tasker felt a little guilty leading the man on like this, but he’d never said Wells did molest a child, only that he may have . Tasker didn’t want to have to fight this guy either, so he figured it all came out in the wash. Now Baby would answer any question they asked.

Nothing was adding up on this case. No matter what Tasker did, Daniel Wells seemed to stay one step ahead of him. This wasn’t some kind of master criminal, either. He had no record. Or maybe that was the mark of a master criminal: no tracks. Either way, with the effort and manpower Tasker was putting into looking for this guy, he’d have thought someone might at least run into him at the grocery store. The southern section of Dade County just wasn’t that big. He had people covering every angle but had yet to put his hands on Wells. The Big Rig Academy proved he was still in the area. Tasker and company couldn’t even find his stripper-wife.

Along with the case problems, Tasker felt guilty about leaving the girls alone during the morning. It was so unusual to have them on a weekday. Thanks to a Jewish holiday that the Palm Beach County school system called a “fall break,” he had been able to have them on a rare Thursday and Friday.

Now Bill Tasker sat at his kitchen table while his girls played a PlayStation game. He’d worn them out before dinner shuttling from a Home Depot to hobby shops, letting them think he was looking for a certain type of glue, when he was really looking for signs of Daniel Wells. He figured that Wells might be looking in places like that for supplies of some kind. If Donna knew he was dragging the girls around on that kind of mission, he’d have been in for a fight. And that woman could fight. He still missed her, but she could lay a big hurt on you if you crossed her.

He looked up at Kelly and Emily as they concentrated on the TV screen. The two sisters shared no qualities other than being sweet. Kelly, the artistic, cerebral, quiet ten-year-old. And Emily, the athletic firebrand. He didn’t deserve such beautiful, well-mannered girls. That was one of his biggest problems in a nutshell. He didn’t deserve much of anything. He’d always been focused on work and tended to exclude everything else. Even after the West Palm shooting, while he was under investigation he could only focus on that. After he’d eventually been cleared, he’d still sulked about it to the point that Donna had thrown his ass right out of his own house. Now that he did deserve.

Every time he made a promise to himself that he’d spend time with his family, something happened to side-track him. He loved them and loved doing things with them. He just couldn’t let things at work drop. Tomorrow he had one meeting in the morning at the office with everyone-then he was coming straight back to these two. He didn’t care what happened.

He looked down at his and the other agent’s notes and knew there was a pattern somewhere, he just couldn’t see it. Unlike the FBI profiler, he didn’t think his own analysis was beyond question. He needed something confirmed. The one thing that the profiler had said that he continued to contemplate was the bomber’s motivation. To be in control. Tasker ran that through his maze of a mind to see if he could relate to it at all. From some of the shit he’d pulled, it seemed like Wells liked to lose control, not gain it. But maybe he was misreading what the profiler had meant. That psychobabble tended to cloud issues. Tasker thought in practical terms, and he couldn’t see a practical reason for Wells to risk his family and bomb that ship. On the other hand, he was running awful hard if he was not involved. What scared Tasker the most was that he felt Wells was working on something else. That had to be the reason he hadn’t left town. That’s why he had a gas tank welded in his step van. Tasker knew he was up to something, and that’s why when he looked up at his daughters and saw they were occupied, he went back to his notes.

Derrick Sutter followed Tasker through the front doors of the Miami Regional Operations Center of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. It was a severe culture shock after the constant bustle of activity at the Miami PD. In the city, local citizens stood in line to get accident reports, report minor crimes and complain about some unknown cop who either didn’t enforce some city ordinance or enforced it too rigorously. Here, west of the airport, in a brand-new, sparkling clean, three-story building, no one waited in the lobby. One well-dressed, nice-looking woman sat comfortably behind thick, bulletproof glass. Sutter was shocked to see her smile and wave to Tasker as he walked inside. That shit wouldn’t happen at the PD. Sutter realized that the mission of FDLE was entirely different from that of a local PD. FDLE worked on big cases which generally weren’t reported directly to them by the public. Sutter decided police work was more efficient if you didn’t include the public.

On the third floor, they turned into an immaculate squad bay with big, clean windows and working computers on every desk. In a spacious conference room at the end of the bay, Sutter could see the delicious Camy Parks sitting with her perfect legs crossed. As he came closer, he saw she was talking to that FBI moron, Jimmy Lail. Tasker’s analyst, Jerry something, stood at the end of the conference table, not even concealing his feelings about Camy’s legs, or the rest of her.

Tasker said, “Sorry we’re late. Thanks for seeing them in, Jerry.”

The older, portly man nodded, not taking his eyes off Camy.

Sutter grabbed the seat next to Camy. “Hey, baby,” he said quietly. It still got a harsh glance from Jimmy Lail. Sutter wondered when he’d realize that a real black man was trying to move in on his territory.

Tasker addressed the whole room. “Let’s see where we are. Who’s first?”

Camy started right up. “No clues from any of the companies he worked for. They all said he was a great guy who worked hard.”