Джеффри Дивер - The Final Twist

A house destroyed and not a single suspect who might be willing to testify against Jonathan Stuart Devereux.

What a loss...

Shaw and Russell had done all they could do and now the case was in the hands of the FBI. The scrubbed, somber agent from the Denver office was named Darrel Gardiner. He and his team would be temporary; the agents would review BlackBridge’s records and interrogate suspects to find out if any San Francisco FBI personnel had been compromised. If not, Gardiner would hand over the case to the field office here.

With Victoria Lesston at his side, Shaw sat at the kitchen table in the safe house, as the FBI agent finished his interview with him. The agent had already spoken to Victoria, Russell and Ty.

Karin, it seemed, was the invisible woman. Her name never came up, and Shaw wasn’t going to volunteer anything about her.

Looking over his notes, Special Agent Gardiner shook his head, topped with a blond businessman’s severe trim. “Extortion, murder, attempted murder and conspiracy, burglary, hacking, eavesdropping... Well.”

Shaw got the impression there was a stronger word he wished to use but couldn’t bring himself to. Religious maybe. Or just the rigorous standards of the profession.

“Urban Improvement Plan?” A shake of his head. “They must’ve dumped thousands of kilos of drugs over the years.”

Shaw said, “Tip of the iceberg. BlackBridge’s got clients all over the world and the UIP was just one of their tactics.”

The company was being shut down, and all the facilities were being seized and searched presently. Other warrants would follow. A U.S. congressman and a congresswoman from California were already looking into voting fraud allegations because of the UIP-manipulated congressional districts in the state. The woman legislator issued a statement condemning the gerrymandering and was calling for an investigation of the politicians who had benefited from the redistricting.

One problem remained, however, a serious one. All of the offenses that Gardiner had just recited had been committed by Helms, Braxton and the BlackBridge crew. Not a bit of evidence could be laid at the feet of Jonathan Stuart Devereux or Banyan Tree Holdings.

“The best insulation I’ve ever seen,” Gardiner told Shaw and Victoria. “It’s early, I understand, but so far Banyan Tree is driven snow.”

Shaw asked the special agent about BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions, whose offices were presently being searched too. “Their execs and staff’ll go down, but there’s no evidence that the parent company or Devereux himself even knew anything about dumping toxic waste on competitors’ land. No emails, no memos. We have phone records, but that’s just who called who and when. We don’t know the content.”

“Devereux was the one who ordered it, right?” Victoria asked, her lips tight in anger.

Gardiner answered, “Of course. But the head of Enviro’s taking the fall for the whole thing. Claims his boss was in the dark.”

Gardiner closed his notebook and shut off the recorder. He slipped them away and handed both Shaw and Victoria his business card.

Other agents — a woman and a man, Latinx — were helping the Prescott family gather their luggage. They would be taken to a federal safe house, where they’d stay during the course of the BayPoint Enviro-Sure Solutions investigation. Shaw wondered if they’d go into witness protection. If Devereux remained free, they would have to.

The family still seemed dazed by what had hit them.

Sam Prescott said, “I don’t know what to say, Mr. Shaw. We’re alive because of you. And what they did, with that bomb in the house... Lord. I can’t imagine being in there when the thing went off.”

Shaw responded with, “Good luck.” The gratitude matter again.

“Thank your brother too.”

Russell was in the safe house, but not present with the family. He was assembling the surveillance gear he’d planted upon his return.

“I’ll do that,” Shaw said.

Prescott and his family then followed the watchful agents out the door.

Ty stepped inside. “Have to leave, Colter. Got a little bit of paperwork to take care of. Oh, I got a call from SFPD. They responded to a complaint in Hunters Point. Man said an Amish Muslim and his buddy threatened to shoot him and then zip-tied him to a radiator in an old warehouse. He said he’s whaled on pirates and if he gets a chance he’s going to punch those guys out too. Just a heads-up.”

“I’ll keep my eye out,” Shaw said with a smile.

“You two make a good team. You brothers. You work together in the past?”

“Trained, ages ago. Never worked.”

“Looks like it all came back to you. Russ was saying you climb mountains?”

“I do.”

“For the fun of it?”

“You should try it some time.”

“Jesus.” Ty shook his hand.

“Oh. And one thing?” Shaw said, reflecting on meeting Ty for the first time in front of the safe house.

The squat man lifted a gear bag that had to weigh fifty pounds as if it contained pillows, and glanced Shaw’s way.

“Be careful with those box cutters.”

“It’s safe.”

“You say that. It’s easy to say it’s safe. Anybody can say it’s safe. It’s easy for me to say I can soar like a seagull but I can’t.”

Colter Shaw stood at the base of the porch and continued speaking to the shadows on the other side of the half-open door of Earnest La Fleur’s Sausalito home.

No arrows had been launched, though the man might have gotten a piece of Shaw if he’d been inclined. He’d moved the oil-drum barricades, as Russell had suggested.

Shaw said, “Droon’s dead. Braxton and Ian Helms’re in jail, and the FBI and state police have locked down all the BlackBridge offices. ATF and SEC’re after them too, I heard.”

“Okay, okay, given that’s true, which I still have to confirm,” La Fleur offered by way of meager rebuttal, “what about the chief boilermaker, Devereux?”

Shaw’s brow creased. “Nothing to nail him on yet.”

“Told you. Man’s elusive as a drop of mercury and just as toxic.”

“Earnest,” Shaw stretched out his unusual name. “Let me in. And could you point the arrow elsewhere?”

“How’d you know I was locked and loaded?”

Shaw exhaled loudly, not bothering to explain that he’d heard the creak of the bow once again — and not troubling either to correct the man, as he had others, by telling him that the “lock and load” phrase applied only to the M1 Garand rifle. And until you unlocked the weapon — which slipped a round into the chamber — it was only as dangerous as a baseball bat.

“All right. Come on in.”

Shaw stepped into the man’s cluttered house, still redolent of ocean and pot.

The scrawny hermit, gripping the bow and a de-notched arrow, pushed past Shaw and strode into the yard. There he stood for a moment and then disappeared into the complicated growth of plants most of whose genus and species Shaw did not know. Beyond them, however, was a landscape of plants featuring rich green leaves pointing outward like splayed fingers. Shaw knew what this crop was.

Returning, La Fleur said, “You might’ve been followed. It looked clear. But, listen to me: never assume you’re safe.”

Shaw nearly smiled. That was the last line of the letter his father had left in Echo Ridge.

La Fleur re-latched the door. There was a chain — that most insubstantial of protective devices. But it wasn’t alone. The other security mechanisms were a knob lock, a massive deadbolt, a crossbar like you’d see in a Middle Ages castle and an iron rod tilting upward at a forty-five-degree angle from floor to door. Shaw wondered if he had a rope ladder somewhere in the place for a fast emergency descent down the cliffside. As a matter of fact, he did: a glance toward the windows revealed a coil of rope, one end of which was tied to a radiator.