The Goodbye Man
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри
- Серия: Colter Shaw #2
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: G. P. Putnam’s Sons
- ISBN: 978-0-525-53597-3
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Goodbye Man». Краткое содержание книги:
Victoria said, “We’d like to make statements.”
The sheriff looked over Shaw’s bloody uniform shirt. “You sure you’re not hurt, sir?”
“No, I was saving the woman who was just wheeled out. The one that Eli ordered murdered.”
Eli, your friend. Or benefactor, at least.
Without reaction, the sheriff fished keys from his pocket and loped toward the SUV. He made a call on his radio. “Tony, you got the rest of Mr. Ellis’s stuff?”
“On its way, Sheriff.”
“’K. We gotta leave.” He walked to the driver’s side door.
“Sheriff,” Shaw called.
The man lifted an eyebrow. His expression was one of boredom.
“Statements? We’re ready to make them.”
“You’re quite the cooperative pair, aren’t you, now? The prosecutor’ll be in touch.”
“You don’t have our names.”
“We’ll figure it out.” Calhoun dropped into the seat and fired up the engine.
Shaw crouched and opened up his backpack. He dug inside. A moment later he was jotting something on a page in one of his notebooks. He tore it out and walked to Calhoun, handed it to him.
“My name and number. Just to make it easy for the prosecutor.”
“Thank you now. World needs more concerned citizens like yourself, sir.”
Shaw returned to Victoria and they watched the deputies load the last of Eli’s baggage into the back of the 4Runner. One of them closed the liftgate and tapped the side of the vehicle twice.
Calhoun accelerated fast through the YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW gate and into the gravel parking lot, leaving a trail of gray haze behind. Accompanying it was the SUV they’d seen earlier, the one filled with files and computers and hard drives.
Victoria tapped Shaw’s shoulder and pointed. On the ground near where the SUV had been was a small white object. It was the sheet of paper, now wadded into a ball, containing his name and number, which he’d handed to the sheriff not two minutes before.
70
Finally, the feds arrived.
Frederick’s call to Tom Pepper had worked.
Special Agent Robert Slay from the Tacoma field office of the FBI had been accompanied by two dozen tactical, forensic and hostage negotiation agents.
“You’re Shaw?” The strongly built, handsome man, wearing a navy blue windbreaker with the letters of his employer on the back, extended his hand and they shook. His hair was jet black.
“This is Victoria...” Shaw lifted an eyebrow her way.
She said, “Lesston.” Her eyes swung to Shaw; apparently they were on a last-name basis now.
Hands on hips, Slay looked over the camp, the clusters of people in the Foundation uniforms. He said nothing but his eyes were taking in the Assistance Unit and the security men in the gray tunics. Most, Shaw observed, had changed to street clothes.
Slay took a call, listened. His expression was grave. “’K. Keep me posted.” He signed off and turned his attention back to Shaw and Victoria. “Appreciate your thoughts on tracking ’em down, Mr. Shaw. I’ve got people on it. But” — he nodded toward the phone — “nothing yet.”
As soon as Shaw had retrieved his phone, he’d called Tom Pepper, who gave him Slay’s number. They’d spoken, as the agent and his teams sped to the camp. Shaw had warned that Sheriff Calhoun was almost certainly going to let Eli and Hugh go. He’d shared with the agent some thoughts on finding the two men. It had been unsuccessful so far — as he’d just learned from Slay.
Shaw asked, “How’d Calhoun do it? An escape?”
“Just let ’em go. Said there was no probable cause. Released all the evidence too.”
Victoria scoffed.
Shaw pointed into the woods, east, near Great Bear Notch. “There’re four perps tied up there. They’ll need some medical attention.”
Victoria: “Oh. Forgot about them.”
“They might stonewall but they’re not members of the cult. They’re hired help. I think they’ll turn, you give ’em the right deal.”
“Charges?”
“Assault. Attempted murder.”
“Who’s the victim?”
“I’m the complaining witness.”
Slay frowned at this. “And you took down four of them?”
Shaw said, “Had some help.”
“What the hell is this place? David Ellis isn’t in ViCAP or any of our files. Neither’s the Osiris Foundation.”
Shaw explained briefly.
“Immortality,” the agent mused. Once again he scanned the Companions, most of whom were standing about aimlessly, wrestling with the death of the dream of living forever. And with the idea that they’d just been swindled. Slay said, “I guess if you’re going to do stupid, why not do stupid big?”
Slay pulled out a digital recorder and pen and pad. He lifted a you ready? eyebrow.
Shaw and Victoria gave nods.
They got down to the debriefing. Both gave detailed explanations of their experiences. While not as long as a bloated nineteenth-century novel, their words contained plenty of information to form the basis of multiple counts to lodge against Eli and other Companions — sex trafficking, underage sexual assault, insider trading, possible money laundering, assault, battery, murder, kidnapping.
“How many people you think’ve gone through here?” Slay asked.
“Been going on for four years,” Shaw told him. “There’ll be a lot of members. Eli got away with plenty of files but there might be a list in Administration. Or in Eli’s residence.”
“We’ll check them out. Some of them must’ve seen something indictable.”
Shaw told him too about the Selects.
At this news Slay paused. “They’re like suicide bombers. We’ll have to track them down too. After this” — waving his hand, meaning the destruction of the Foundation — “they might be, I don’t know, programmed to eliminate witnesses.”
“And we have this.” Shaw handed over the video camera that they’d hidden in Building 14, when he and Victoria broke in to swap out the poison for sugar. Shaw had lifted it from the office beside the Study Room. It caught AUs doctoring the wine.
One of them was Hugh. On the tape he could be heard barking to a colleague, “Fuck, get the mask on. This shit’ll kill you.”
“It’s poison. It’s supposed to.”
“Looks like sugar to me.”
“Try some. Let me know how sweet it is.”
Slay called over an evidence technician, who bagged the camera and took Shaw’s name for the chain of custody documents.
The agent slipped away his digital recorder. “Just curious, what the hell’re you two doing here? You don’t seem like cult fodder to me.”
Shaw said, “Just something...”
Victoria finished it: “Personal.”
“Well, there’s a story behind that,” Slay said, in a tone that meant he didn’t really need to hear it.
Steve approached. He had scrubbed most of the blood off his hands, though the shirt was ruined. Shaw noted that the red of the blood and the blue of the cloth combined to make purple.
“Anja?” Shaw asked.
“They can’t say.”
Shaw introduced the assistant to the agent. The young man, eyes red and swollen from recent tears, explained his job. Shaw told Slay about the notebook, which contained all things Eli.
“I hid it behind the residence. I’ll get it for you.”
Shaw had told Slay that SFPD Detective Etoile had reopened the investigation into Yang’s death, which had undoubtedly been ordered by Eli because the reporter was looking into improprieties at the Foundation.