A Line in the Sand, page 7
“Pat, is there a computer I can use?” asked Catherine.
“Yeah, of course.” He went over to a cabinet along the wall where a desktop computer sat among papers and boxes of latex gloves. He logged her on to the medical examiner office’s internet and grabbed a stool for her.
Cat sat down and pulled up the search engine, and the doctor and Lamar took up positions over her shoulders. “Foreign jump wings, Lamar?”
“Probably a good start.”
She typed that in. A grid of images filled the screen. She scrolled down the page. Hundreds of images. A small number of the badges and pins had light blue wings, but none had the distinctive shape of the body’s tattoo or the darker shade of blue. “I’m not seeing it.”
“Try adding blue,” said Lamar.
Catherine went back to the search bar, added it, and hit Return. Another collection of images filled the screen. Many had been in the previous search, but not all. She scrolled down the page again. The screen’s glow washed over their faces as they leaned in closer to look.
“Come on. It’s gotta be here somewhere,” Lamar said.
She kept scrolling. One page turned into another. And then another. And another.
“There!” said Dr. Martin. His finger shot to the edge of the screen. It hovered over an image of a patch with the exact same color scheme as the tattoo.
“The wings are angled a bit different, but the colors are right,” said Cat. She clicked on the image. It led to an online marketplace where an embroidered patch was for sale. The item’s description read SAS pattern parachute wings.
“What’s SAS stand for?” the doctor asked.
“Special Air Service,” Lamar answered. “British special forces.”
Catherine looked up at him. “Would that explain what we found in his room?”
“Maybe. But it doesn’t explain why he’d be here. Maybe some kind of training exercise for the secret squirrels? I don’t know. But even for these guys, my guess is it’s highly unusual for a foreign special forces soldier to be solo in the U.S. with a weapon. Hey, try searching for SAS jump wings. The angle of the wings is still not quite right. Let’s see if there’s a better match, or maybe it’s just the guy who did the line work on his tat improvised.”
She typed the words in. Near the bottom of the first page, they saw it. An exact match in shape and color. Catherine clicked on the link. It led to another online marketplace where a patch with the wings was for sale. The item’s description read Genuine Modern Australian Special Air Service Regiment Parachute Wings.
“The Australian special forces?” asked Cat. “What the hell is going on here?”
“I don’t know. I’d see those guys every once in a while when I was over there. I know they do a lot of heavy lifting in Afghanistan too. Here’s what I want to know,” Lamar said. “What are the odds that all four of the people on that beach don’t have some connection to Iraq?”
Cat counted off on her fingers as she answered. “Bajalan. Perp one. Perp two. And our vic.”
“I’d say slim to none, and slim left town,” Lamar said.
Catherine got up from the stool and said, “Pat, you are a lifesaver. I’m gonna get you a junior detective badge for this one.”
“Thanks, Detective Wheel,” he replied sarcastically.
Cat stripped off her gloves and threw them in a medical-waste receptacle. “Seriously. You are the absolute best.”
Lamar stripped off his gloves as well and said, “Okay, Detective, what’s next?”
Cat was lost in thought as they walked out of the building and into the fading daylight. She lit a smoke. “You want Bajalan or the nerds?”
“I think I can break the ice with Bajalan.” He checked his watch. “He should still be at the motel. If I get there soon, I can see if there’s more to his story.”
“Sounds good,” said Cat. “I’ll head to the house and see if the techs got anything. Drop me at my unit, will you? It’s still in the parking lot by the beach. And Lamar,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Pack a bag. We’re going to DC in the a.m.”
Lamar watched Cat drive out of the parking lot and head toward the ramp to get on I-64. He turned and looked out over the long stretch of sand to where it met the sea, low and gray but coming in again. By the time it was dark, the spray and foam would reach close to where the body lay that morning. It was not dark yet, but the shadows of the bent pines had already joined his own in stretching out across the sand.
He left his car in the lot and walked down toward Bajalan’s place of employment, the Sea Breeze Motel. When he crossed the parking lot, his shoes crunched in the shell-speckled aggregate, and he looked up at the letter board beneath the faded hotel sign. THE REWARD FOR LIVING A GOOD LIFE IS LIVING A GOOD LIFE, it read. Lamar smiled and shook his head, then scanned the property before walking up to the door, one hand on his hip and the other resting casually on the backstrap of his holstered .40.
The bell dinged when he swung the glass door open, and he walked into a clean but well-worn reception area. An old man behind the check-in desk looked up from the book he was reading and eyed him suspiciously over the tops of the pair of glasses resting on the bridge of his nose. He wore a black ball cap with the 101st Screaming Eagle on the front, and he had both hands somewhere below the level of the counter.
“Help you, son?” he said.
“I hope so. Hoping I could speak with Mr. Bajalan again. We met this morning. I’m a detective with Norfolk PD.”
“You got a card or something?”
“He around?”
The old man didn’t say anything. Lamar rested his elbows on the counter and saw the butt end of a shotgun leaning against the employee side of the desk. A large revolver hung from a holster on the old man’s tooled-leather belt.
“I don’t mean no disrespect, young man, but if you ain’t got a warrant and you ain’t got no card saying who you are, that’s likely gonna remain a mystery to you.”
Lamar took out a card and handed it over to the man. He took out his detective badge and showed it to him before clipping it to his belt again. “That’s my fault, sir. I should have made mention when I first came in.”
The old man looked the card over and put it in the pocket of his shirt. “I’ll see he gets it. Whether he wants to talk to you is up to him. Boy’s grown.”
“He’s not in any kind of trouble. I was kind of hoping I could ask him a few questions about his time as a terp. An int—”
“I know what it is,” the man interjected.
“About his time during the war.”
“Like I said, boy’s grown. And if it’s all the same to you, y’all ought to be able to figure out that circling a man’s place of employment all dang day might make him reluctant to speak if he’s got any sense in his head.”
“Pardon?” Lamar asked.
“I seen that same Dodge Charger go up and down Ocean View least six times. How many civilians do you think there are driving blacked-out Chargers with bull bars on the front? Came through the parking lot couple, three times, maybe. You really want to talk to that boy, you oughtn’t to be hounding him this way. He ain’t done nothing.”
“Sorry, sir, you mind if I step outside and make a quick phone call?”
“When I woke up this morning, it was still a free country.” The man slid a yellow Post-it note across the desk to Lamar. “Didn’t see the whole plate,” he said, then he crossed his arms over his chest and sat there glaring.
“Okay. I’ll be right back.”
Lamar stepped out into the parking lot and walked a few steps away from the door to be out of the proprietor’s line of sight. He dialed Cat’s number, but it rang through to her voice mail. “Catherine,” he said, “something weird’s going on with Bajalan. See if someone at the house put a unit on him, will you?”
He closed the phone and looked out across the parking lot to the web of streets and single-story buildings shaded by the crowns of trees that rose behind them. No traffic. The air quivered in the heat. A sweat bee hovered by his ear; he swatted at it lazily. He dialed up the area office of the state police. A voice answered, and Lamar spoke in a nervous hush. “This is Detective Adams with Norfolk PD. I need to speak to someone in the witness protection program ASAP.”
“Do you have the extension?”
“Sorry? No. Can you just put me through, please? It’s urgent.”
“Hold, please.”
Breezy jazz guitar crackled over the connection. Lamar looked at his watch. After eight p.m. Please be there.
“Detective, are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“Sir, no one from that unit is available right now. If you’d like, I can take a message, and someone will get back to you tomorrow in the a.m.”
He put the mouthpiece of the phone against his shirt and cursed. He brought the phone back up to his ear. “No. Thanks. I’ll go through my department and get a direct number.” He closed the phone and sat there staring at it wondering who to call. The phone rang in his hand. “Catherine?” he asked.
“Hey. What’s up? I just got to the house. About to see if the tech guys have anything before they head home.”
“Did you listen to the message?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Do me a favor, please. Check if someone put an unmarked on Bajalan.”
“All right, hold tight a sec.”
Lamar scanned the landscape. Streetlights on but the sun still up. Bugs swarmed the lamplight. The first sliver of pink far out to the west had begun its journey across the sky. It was almost twilight under the trees. He thought he caught a glimpse of a black sedan pass by a cross street and then fade again, hidden by the street-side trees.
Catherine came back on the line. “Nobody’s on Bajalan. Everything all right? You had a chance to talk to him yet?”
Lamar thumbed open the button of his holster without thinking. The sweat bee buzzed at the back of his neck. “No. Something spooked him. His boss ran interference for him. I don’t even know if he’s still here.”
“What spooked him?”
“Old man at the motel says they’ve seen what sounds like an unmarked circling, making the rounds up and down Ocean View. I don’t know. Could be he’s trying to put me off, but I don’t think so. Old boy doesn’t seem the type to traffic in bullshit. I called the troopers to try to get in touch with witness protection but didn’t get anywhere.”
“Yeah, that’s a dry hole, Lamar. I tried to use it a couple of years back, and they told me the best they could do is put in an alarm system at the wit’s house, but it might take a month or two.”
“Jesus.”
“Yup. Look, why don’t you see if you can lay eyes on Bajalan, and I’ll have a couple of uniforms sit on the motel if it’ll ease his mind.”
“Yeah. Okay. That’ll work. Thanks, Catherine. Let me know what you hear from the tech guys.”
“Call me back after, will ya? I’m gonna head home in an hour or two to pack for the morning.”
“Got it. Talk to you soon. Hey, put a BOLO on a Charger with bull bars on the front, will you? Partial plate X,Y.”
“X,Y. Okay, I’m on it.”
Lamar put the phone back in his pocket and kept his eyes on the distant intersection where he thought he’d seen the sedan pass by a few minutes before. Nothing. Waves crashed against the beach across the street behind him. The wind shook the leaves of the trees, gone silver in the fading light. He turned and went back inside.
Catherine dropped her bag at her desk on the top floor of police headquarters. She called dispatch and asked for a patrol unit to detour to the vicinity of the motel. She closed the phone, took her holstered pistol, and stuffed it and the phone in her purse. The city was almost dark outside the windows. Fluorescent lights hummed in a checkerboard above her. She used the card on her lanyard to access the stairwell and went to Investigative Support. A few heads popped up from cubicles when she swung the glass door open, but the unit was practically empty at that hour. She passed through the open workspace until she got to another door, behind which the forensic section worked.
Joe Parker, the department’s senior computer forensic examiner, waved her over. She walked to his desk, put her hand on the back of his chair, and leaned over his shoulder to see what he was working on. The laptop they’d found at the Square and Compass Inn was open. Joe’s arms were folded on his desk, and his chin rested on them. He looked up at the blank screen like a child in class who did not want to be called on.
“Joe? You all right, bud?” Catherine asked.
He didn’t answer.
She patted him on the shoulder, but he kept eyeing the screen as though it might be possible for him to win a staring contest with an inanimate object. “Fort Knox, Detective Wheel. No. A bank vault inside Fort Knox inside a maximum-security prison.”
Catherine straightened up and waited for him to spin his chair around and look at her. He did, then crossed a leg over his knee and took his glasses off. “I’m very good at my job, Catherine.”
“I know you are, Joe.”
“No one is getting into this computer.”
“What do you mean? Can’t you do your hacker stuff? Run some kind of program to break in?”
He laughed. “Yeah. Normally, we’d do the ‘hacker stuff.’” He put it in air quotes. He turned back around and looked at the laptop. “I’m serious, Detective. This isn’t like some kiddie-porn asshole who uses his high-school mascot as his password. This is really sophisticated protection. This is like, I don’t know, National Security Agency–type protection. Whoever had this laptop wanted to make damn sure whatever’s on it wasn’t seen without permission.”
“There’s really no way in?”
“Cat, it’s completely air-gapped. Network ports are blocked. Get me a key and the best decryption software in the world and maybe. This thing has never been connected to the internet. It can’t be. That functionality has been eliminated. Jesus, even the LAN connection is blocked. This is set up almost like a bearer bond. Whoever physically possesses the password and key, and probably an associated thumb drive, gets in. Everybody else can kick rocks.”
“Who uses this level of security?” she asked.
“I wasn’t kidding. NSA. Foreign equivalents. Maybe some of the top multinationals. The thing is, security like this is implemented only when you know someone wants it bad enough to violate a bunch of different laws. Security like this means you’re willing to physically guard the information. I don’t know who you’ve got on the other end of whatever case you’re working, but they’re serious.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s looking that way. Thanks, Joe.”
EIGHT
The kids wheeled their oversize beach cruisers through the hot night, pumping the pedals, then standing with their chests at the curved handlebars as they glided down the sidewalk along Ocean View Avenue. Four wide, they turned into the sandy parking lot of Red’s Beachside Bar and Billiards. One by one, they dismounted, the oldest standing with both feet on one pedal until the bike rolled to the back corner of the building, where he hopped off and leaned the bike against the cinder blocks.
The four of them, none older than fourteen, huddled in the darkness outside the reach of the parking lot’s lights. “Ante up,” the oldest boy said. The other three reached in their pockets and brought out dollar bills and half rolls of quarters that they turned over to him. He stuffed the money in the pocket of his board shorts and said, “I’ll be right back.”
They watched him slink toward the open screen door just around the rear of the building, from which they could hear a country band distinguish itself from the more common collective noises of a dive bar at that hour. The boy went into the kitchen, which was hot and loud, the cooks sweaty and swearing and tipping back cans of Natural Light from an open case that sat on a wire shelving unit behind them. They worked the fryers in their stained aprons, and as they tossed wings in pans, they hardly noticed or cared to notice the boy’s figure passing behind them. He stepped carefully across the slippery red tiles and peered through the window of the swinging door that separated the kitchen from the hallway that went past the dirty restrooms and led to the bar and sawdusted dance floor. The music was now louder than any thought in his head, and by habit, he eyed the lit-up cigarette vending machine sitting at the end of the hall and pushed the swinging door open just enough to slide through.
When he got in the hall, he slowly inched his way along the wood-paneled wall, and a man and a woman stumbled out of the ladies’ room, she buttoning up her cutoff shorts and the man with his arm around her shoulders for support. He could see them both laughing but could not hear it as the band pushed a honky-tonk number till the bar’s sound system reached its limit and stayed there, the pedal steel guitar wavering and the bass and drums thrashing out a wall of noise that had the crowd in a frenzy of sweat and beer and movement.
The woman looked at the boy, smiled, and tousled his hair as they passed him and went back to the dance floor. The boy knelt down by the vending machine and loaded up quarters and dollars until he had enough to pull the knob on a pack of Kools, and as he did, he looked over his shoulder and made eye contact with the barman. He saw the man point and his mouth formed the shape of a shout, and the boy grabbed the smokes and ran out through the kitchen, taking four beers from the open case meanwhile.
The other boys watched him come around the corner running with an armful of beer cans, shouting, “Go, go, go!”
“Oh, shit!” said one, and the boys grabbed a beer each from him, stuffed them in their pockets, slung their bikes toward the street, hopped on, and began to pedal furiously. They were laughing, and a cloud of sand white as the moon rose from their back wheels in the sodium-vapor lamplight as they scrambled out of the parking lot and turned down the sidewalk toward Ocean View Beach Park. The oldest boy looked behind him and saw the barman come out of the building. He lingered in his looking, the boy half believing he saw grief or sadness in the barman’s expression. The barman stayed too and watched the figures fade into the night as if they had been ghosts come to visit from his own distant youth.
