High Country Nocturne - [54]
“Still hurt like a son of a bitch,” he said. “I think he actually enjoyed doing it.”
Cartwright bought Peralta time to escape by acting more injured than he was. It was more than two hours before the courier-turned-robber was identified. To further camouflage the sting, the FBI instantly removed Eric Pham because he was Peralta’s friend. They brought in a senior agent from the outside to take charge.
“Horace Mann,” I said.
“He’s a supervisory special agent. Flew in from Minneapolis on a Bureau jet and took charge.”
“Does he know who you are?”
“He might find out I was quietly forced to retire ten years ago or face charges for bribery.”
That was the cover story that allowed Cartwright to go undercover. I said, “No chance he could know you’re still on the job.”
“There’s always a chance.” He momentarily looked back at the hospital. “But it’s a reasonable risk. Remember, the idea was to get be out of this early so I’d be nothing but a bit player, a victim at that.”
“Is Mann a suspect?”
“That’s an interesting thought, but no,” Cartwright said. “The prime suspect is named Pamela Grayson. She’s a senior agent in evidence control. Two years ago, she was investigated when eight pounds of very high quality heroin went missing, but she was cleared. So she was already on the radar for the diamonds.”
“Already?”
Cartwright nodded. “It gets better. She served as a field agent in the Central African Republic. That’s one of the centers of diamonds used to fund wars, drugs, you name it. Here’s a sweet part: she was already in town when the robbery happened, staying at the Phoenician. Vacation, she said.”
“What color is her hair?”
He looked at me curiously. “Brown. I’ve only seen the pictures.”
People can color their hair.
I thought more about all he was telling me. “But this meant she had to know what the Russians knew. So either she had lost the diamonds to the Russians and was trying to get them back. Or she was working with the Russians, and why did they need you? Plus, all this drama would make me stay as far away as possible.”
“Maybe you’d make a bad thief, David. When this much money is the itch somebody needs to scratch, he-or she-will take chances. Get reckless.”
It sounded too complicated. Too many unanswered questions. Too much that could go wrong.
I said, “But what if the real thief was Mann?”
Cartwright squinted at me. “Why do you have a hard-on for him?”
“We had a nice little chat,” I said. “I don’t like him. He also strikes me as a control freak. Did he volunteer for this, or was he assigned?”
“Cartwright said, “He volunteered to a priority request but…”
“So if he stole the diamonds from evidence and was working with the Russians, he’d be in the perfect position to steer the investigation wrong. As it is, Grayson has been tipped off by the robbery and if anything happens to her, she can claim entrapment.”
“Don’t play high-school lawyer, David. This was moving fast. I wasn’t totally comfortable with the plan.”
Then I told him about the voice on Pennington’s phone. “Mann’s window is closing.”
“Are you sure you heard right?” he said. “Horace Mann has a clean record. He’s been decorated for valor. Maybe your caller said ‘the man.’ Something like that.”
“I know what I heard. If Horace Mann is dirty, what next?”
“If that’s true, Pham has it covered.”
“Pham’s not in Alaska?”
“Hell, no. That’s disinformation, same as using the media to make sure the Russians and the bad fed knew Peralta was the robber. The director wanted redundancy and secrecy because this evidence theft involved a compromise of Bureau security. So he had Pham handpick a very small team that could go dark and be Peralta’s guardian angels. Mann doesn’t know.”
“What could possibly go wrong?”
“Smart ass. Peralta has a GPS homing device concealed in his shoe but it never activated. The trackers on his vehicle didn’t function, or he removed them. We haven’t heard anything. The messages he left for you at least show he was still alive as of Friday night. I have no idea why he went to the High Country.”
“And he willingly got into a sedan that headed back to the Interstate. That’s what the witness told me. He could be in Southern California by now.”
“Hell.”
I recounted my conversation with the Chandler detective, how the official shipment had been found but the hidden compartment was empty. He said he already knew.
Then I asked him who was shadowing Sharon. Phoenix field agents working for Mann. That gave me little comfort.
“But nobody was watching our house. Why not?”
“I’m not sure. Might be a manpower issue. Peralta was trying very hard to keep you out of this, keep you safe.”
A stream of bile started creeping up from my stomach. “That worked really well. If they had been there, Lindsey wouldn’t have been shot.”
“I’m sorry, David. There’s a lot of moving pieces.”
“Yeah. This was a pretty damned big moving piece. What about this woman,” I pulled out the Phoenix PD sketch. “Pamela Grayson?”
“No.”
I pointed at Strawberry Death. “How does she fit?”
He shook his head. “I saw that on TV. I have no idea.”
“That’s not good enough.” My tone was full-on angry now. “She’s connected to this. When she confronted me in the front yard, she said, ‘Where are my stones?’ When I told her I didn’t have them, she talked about having to keep a promise to Peralta.”
In this "prequel" to the popular David Mapstone mysteries, author Jon Talton takes us back to 1999, when everything dot-com was making money, the Y2K bug was the greatest danger facing the world, and the good times seemed as if they would never end.It was a time before David and Lindsey were together, before Mike Peralta was sherriff, and before David had rid himself of the sexy and mysterious Gretchen.In Phoenix, it's the sweet season and Christmas and the new millennium are only weeks away. But history professor David Mapstone, just hired by the Sheriff's Office, still finds trouble, chasing a robber into an abandoned warehouse and discovering a gruesome crime from six decades ago.Mapstone begins an investigation into a Depression-era kidnapping that transfixed Arizona and the nation: the disappearance of a cattle baron's grandsons, their bodies never found.
Cincinnati homicide Detective Will Borders now walks with a cane and lives alone with constant discomfort. He's lucky to be alive. He's lucky to have a job, as public information officer for the department. But when a star cop is brutally murdered, he's assigned to find her killer. The crime bears a chilling similarity to killings on the peaceful college campus nearby, where his friend Cheryl Beth Wilson is teaching nursing. The two young victims were her students. Most homicides are routine, the suspects readily apparent.
The private-detective business starts out badly for former Phoenix Deputy David Mapstone, who has teamed up with his old friend and boss, Sheriff Mike Peralta. Their first client is gunned down just after hiring them. The case: A suspicious death investigation involving a young Arizona woman who fell from a condo tower in San Diego. The police call Grace Hunter's death a suicide, but the client doesn't buy it. He's her brother. Or is he? After his murder, police find multiple driver's licenses and his real identity is a mystery.
Cheryl Beth Wilson is an elite nurse at Cincinnati Memorial Hospital who finds a doctor brutally murdered in a secluded office. Wilson had been having an affair with the doctoras husband, a surgeon, and this makes her a aperson of interesta to the police, if not at outright suspect. But someone other than the cops is watching Cheryl Beth.The killing comes as former homicide detective Will Borders is just hours out of surgery. But as his stretcher is wheeled past the crime scene, he knows this is no random act of violence.
A handsome young New York professor comes to Phoenix to research his new book. But when he's brutally murdered, police connect him to one of the world's most deadly drug cartels. This shouldn't be a case for historian-turned-deputy David Mapstone – except the victim has been dating David's sister-in-law Robin and now she's a target, too. David's wife Lindsey is in Washington with an elite anti-cyber terror unit and she makes one demand of him: protect Robin.This won't be an easy job with the city police suspicious of Robin and trying to pressure her.
В четвертом романе из серии о Фредрике Дрюме главный герой переживает удивительные приключения в пирамиде Хеопса в Египте.
В книге рассказывается история главного героя, который сталкивается с различными проблемами и препятствиями на протяжении всего своего путешествия. По пути он встречает множество второстепенных персонажей, которые играют важные роли в истории. Благодаря опыту главного героя книга исследует такие темы, как любовь, потеря, надежда и стойкость. По мере того, как главный герой преодолевает свои трудности, он усваивает ценные уроки жизни и растет как личность.
Подростками в лесу случайно обнаружена машина «Жигули». В салоне было большое пятно засохшей крови, а в багажнике лежала лопата измазанная свежей землей...Снова начальнику отделения уголовного розыска Антону Бирюкову выпало трудное дело.
«Никлас Монсаррат родился в Ливерпуле в 1910 г. Окончил Тринити колледж Кембриджского университета. Его первая значительная книга «Это — школьный класс» вышла в 1939 г. Во время второй мировой войны служил в военно-морском флоте Великобритании. Морская служба послужила источником сюжетов многих из его последующих книг. В 1956 г. он возглавил информационный центр Великобритании в Йоханнесбурге, а потом в Оттаве. Наибольшей популярностью пользовалась его книга «Жестокое море», вышедшая в 1951 г., по которой был снят одноименный фильм.
Погибла директор элитного детского сада. Несчастный случай, обычное дорожное происшествие, виновник которого скрылся? Так может считать полиция, но только не проницательная Джулиет Эпплбаум. Она уверена — совершено преднамеренное убийство, и только ей под силу раскрыть это дело. И конечно, не без помощи мужа и двухлетней дочери. Джулиет Эпплбаум и ее невероятное семейство снова в бою. Искрометный захватывающий детектив Эйлет Уолдман «Преступления в детской».
