Danger Close (John Taylor #7) - Chapter 4

The sheriff’s office wasn’t hard to find, located at the end of the main street, in a small one-story building that housed the courthouse, police station, and mayor’s office. The building was divided into a two-story center section with two one-story wings on either side.

The two-story center held the city's town hall, which was mostly just a clerk’s office that handled tickets, permits, and the like, a storage room for records, and the mayor's office. Taylor had read somewhere the mayor was also the owner of the grocery store and wondered if people needed to see him about the store did they come here, or did they have to go there if they had town business.

The courthouse was on the left side of the building and was really just a single courtroom and the judge's office. As small as it was, Silver Plains was the largest city in the county, which stopped just short of Odessa, which meant anyone who needed to see a judge was forced to drive here instead of dealing with it in their own town. Taylor imagined for some, that could be a pain, considering the size of the county. On the map he’d looked at, some of the cities that would still be under this judge's jurisdiction were almost seventy miles away. That was life in the desert, apparently.

The right side of the building held their actual destination, the sheriff’s office. The sheriff was actually a county official, and not law enforcement for only Silver Plains. It had probably been located here because this was where the courthouse was. It also meant the few deputies the county had were forced to patrol a pretty large chunk of land, which probably meant that people were forced to deal with many problems themselves. Of course, this was West Texas, which also probably meant everyone was armed and might have preferred dealing with problems without the sheriff getting involved.

Just like with the courthouse side of the building, it wasn’t particularly large for what a police station and jail needed to be. Taylor wondered if they had more than one or two cells in total. If he had to guess, they only housed people when absolutely necessary and most likely sent anyone awaiting trial to a state penitentiary.

They pushed through the glass doors that separated the building's lobby from its three parts and into the police station, where an older woman manned a counter that separated the fairly small room from the five by ten foot area used as some kind of reception. It seemed a bit unnecessary, since there were only four desks behind her and two doors that led into what he guessed was the jail. He didn’t even see anything that looked like a sheriff’s office.

“Captain Chenier,” the woman said, looking up at them. “How can we help you?”

“We need to see Sheriff Martin,” he said, actually looking past her to a woman sitting at one of the four desks behind her.

“These're the Feds you mentioned, Jim?” the woman, who Taylor assumed was the sheriff, said, standing up and walking over to the counter.

“Hi, I’m Agent Whitaker, this is Agent Taylor.”

“I guess y'all can come on back to my office,” she said, waving them to follow her.

Her office turned out to be through one of the two doors he’d noticed and contained the precinct's break room slash armory. Taylor imagined something like this would give most law enforcement professionals heartburn, but maybe they had to make do with the little space they had.

One wall had three gun cabinets, while the other contained filing cabinets and a refrigerator. In the center of the room was a plastic fold-out table with six fold-out metal chairs around it. The sheriff flopped down in one of the chairs and propped her feet up on the table, leaning back.

Taylor had a hard time getting a read on her. She seemed a bit on the short side and she wore her dark hair down and loose, which most cops chose not to do, since it both got in the way and could be a liability when wrestling with a suspect. She also wore a noticeable ring on her right index finger. It had a black band with a small inset stone. It wasn’t a graduation ring, at least not one that he’d ever seen before, or any kind of wedding or engagement ring. Even still, most cops wore only a simple plain band if they were on the job, since anything more might get damaged or lost. Whitaker kept hers on a chain around her neck, tucked inside her dress shirt and undershirt, to make sure she didn’t lose it, and she was an FBI agent who didn't often have to deal with drunks.

The rest of her, however, was just like any other cop he’d met. Her uniform was bulky, probably because she was wearing a vest, which most uniformed police did on duty, with a bulky belt holding all the sundries cops needed throughout the day. Her shoes were standard police issue, like she’d picked up everything from the same catalog, except worn in, which meant she wasn’t just a show pony.

“So, I guess you folks have questions?”

“Some, but we also wanted to stop in and introduce ourselves. While we’ll mostly be working on the base, it looks like there’s enough of a connection to the town itself that our investigation will extend here as well. I like to extend the courtesy of an official introduction to local law enforcement, since we might have to work with each other,” Whitaker said.

“Friendly of you. I’m Sheriff Martin. You said you’re Agent Whitaker and the grumpy looking man’s Agent Taylor, and that there’s Captain Chenier. Consider us introduced.”

“Right,” Whitaker said, caught off guard by her nature.

Taylor, however, found he liked her right away. She had a bullshit-free kind of attitude he appreciated.

“Getting down to business, I wanted to get your read on what’s been happening in your town, Sheriff. Even with an Army base here, I’m assuming murders in a town this size can’t be all that common, so two civilians in as many months has to be a big deal.”

Whitaker gave him a side-eyed glace that he knew meant he was going off script and she didn’t like it. She preferred playing it closer to the vest with locals, since they usually had their own agendas and motives in their jurisdictions, which sometimes got in the way of their investigation. Taylor could appreciate that, and normally approved of the attitude, since a lot of local sheriffs and police chiefs were little more than tin-pot dictators, more focused on maintaining control of their local fiefdoms or getting reelected than anything else.

“Well, for one, you’re assumptions about our town here are wrong. Not that you don’t have us rightly pegged as a small southern town where nothing much happens, and a few years ago you’d have been pretty well on the money. This year though, things have been a bit more exciting.”

“You’ve had more than just these two murders?” Taylor asked, surprised.

“We have. Over the last three years, we’ve had nine murders, not counting the two the Army has taken jurisdiction over.”

“Nine? I haven’t looked at crime stats for small towns in a while,” Whitaker said, “but that seems like a lot.”

“It is. By comparison, that’s as many as we’ve had in the previous fifty years combined.”

“Why so many? I know some small towns have started having issues with drug problems. Meth and the like,” Whitaker said.

“That might be so, but that’s not what happened here. None of the murders seem connected to drugs or any crime at all. Two of them happened in the same two months as the two the Army has claimed responsibility for.”

“You’ve had four murders in two months?” Taylor asked.

“Yep.”

Taylor turned to look at Chenier, who held up his hands.

“The sheriff has already made the suggestion I think you’re about to. We looked into them. There’s no sign that those murders are in any way connected to what’s happened on the base.”

“In a town of fewer than two thousand people, you’re telling me that there were four murders connected to the problems at Fort Chilton and just two coincidental murders in the town, and they’re in no way connected.”

“That’s what I said,” the sheriff said.

“I know that sounds bad, but you just heard her,” the captain said. “We’ve had nine murders in three years, counting those two. Clearly, there’s something going on here that has nothing to do with what’s happening on the base.”

“Do we know that? I find it hard to believe that they went fifty years with no murders and over a three-year period they’ve had a rash of murders and you’ve had a black market ring pop up on base, and they’re in no way connected.”

“Again, that’s what I said.

“Coincidences happen; it doesn’t mean there’s some big conspiracy here. The problems on base didn’t start until a year ago, which means that two years of those increased murders happened before a single thing went missing from the base. They’re unconnected events, and the Army isn’t about to start claiming responsibility for local matters.”

“How can you be sure that the first time Fort Chilton had a problem with supplies going missing was a year ago? A lot of units rotate in and out of the base, and a lot of supplies, both attached to those units and delivered to supply them, end up missing.”

“I know you two are hotshot investigators sent across the country to look at the big problems, but I’m not some idiot yokel. What crime we do have is because people got drunk or an argument got out of hands. These murders though; all of them cold-blooded without an explanation. We brought in forensic techs all the way from El Paso for the last two, and they found nothing. No fingerprints, no blood that wasn’t the victim's, nothing that shouldn’t have been at the scene. Sound familiar?”

“Did you look into any of these murders,” Taylor asked the captain.

“No, because they had no clear ties to Fort Chilton or the army in any way. The sheriff is also leaving out some information. The last murder was a stripper and the one before that a notorious drunk. Maybe we should consider if that falls into the ‘people who got drunk or had an argument’ category of local crime. There are plenty of explanations for those murders outside of the Army. She’s also failing to mention it’s almost election time again, and her constituents have started noticing all these unsolved murders.”

The sheriff dropped her feet to the ground with a thump and pushed herself up with her palms against her knees.

“Well, as much of a pleasure it is to work with the Army, I have things to do today. So, if there won’t be anything else?”

“Sheriff Martin, could you get us copies of whatever you have on these local murders and any other crime that you think might be connected?” Whitaker asked. “I promise we’ll take this seriously, and give it our full intention.”

“You’re not seriously taking her seriously?” Chenier said, angrily.

“We believe in having all the information available when conducting an investigation, Captain. Small towns like this and Army bases do NOT operate in a vacuum and if you can’t see a string of murders starting not long before the Army noticed it was missing supplies might be connected, then I have concerns about your abilities to investigate anything. Now, I’m not saying you’re wrong and I’m not saying these murders are connected to the Army. What I am saying is I want to have the full picture so I know what we’re talking about. Refusing to even look at something that might be potentially connected is stupid, at the very least.”

Chenier’s face reddened and he turned and stormed out of the sheriff’s office.

“What’s that people always say about me, being the one without tact,” Taylor said, grinning at Whitaker. “Sheriff, it was a pleasure. Just send those documents over when you get a chance.”

Taylor gave a single wave to the sheriff before turning and following the captain out. He found the captain pacing by the staff car he’d been driving, muttering to himself.

“You’ll have to forgive her, Captain. She believes in doing everything by the book, and they’re big on getting information.”

“I want to make it clear that I’m not going to sign off on the Army taking responsibility for any more murders without absolute proof they’re connected.”

“I get it, and trust me; our focus is still on your black marketeers. Besides, her procedures also make it so she won’t jump to any conclusions until she has enough to document them, so no worries there.”

“Fine,” he said, glaring at Whitaker before getting into the car and pulling the door shut behind him.

“I gotta say, it’s exhausting always having to explain why you’re such an asshole,” Taylor said, repeating a phrase she’d said to him so many times before.

“Shut up,” she said, getting into the back seat of the car.

Taylor grinned to himself, enjoying the role reversal.

Chenier dropped them off at the small hut that currently served as their barracks and office without a word, driving off as soon as they were out of the vehicle.

“So,” Taylor said once they were inside. “What’s the plan?”

“I don’t know. Chenier might be more about protecting the Army than he is solving this, but he’s covered his bases pretty well. The murders are too clean, so unless these people make a big mistake, I’m not sure that we’re going to find anything, either.”

“That’s my problem. Everything’s so clean. We’ve investigated a lot of stuff over the years, and nothing has ever been this clean. We’re missing something, I’m positive.”

“Maybe, but we still need to figure out what that is.”

“So if the murders are this clean, let's come at it from the other side, right? We try and catch the thieves, either tracing what’s missing or setting a trap for them.”

“There have been five investigations so far into this group, not counting us, and every single one has tried to track the missing items. I’ve looked through their notes, and I can’t find anything they missed.”

“I just can’t believe the stuff just went up and vanished. Okay, I get the pallet of MREs, but the guns? There’s been enough time to sell those. The odds are one of them would have turned up where it shouldn’t have by now.”

“I know, but the serial numbers are in every law enforcement database, waiting for a hit. Nothing.”

“Okay, then how about how it’s getting out of here? We’re in the middle of literally nowhere, so it’s ending up on a truck or a plane, and it could only leave through here or the town, right? The options for shipping out stuff covertly are pretty damn limited.”

“They’ve checked that too. They had every truck, plane, and car leaving in any direction checked for a four-month period, and they found nothing. That was the same time frame during which one of the crates of ammunition went missing. We’re not talking boxes that could fit in a trunk; we’re talking ten-thousand rounds on a pallet.”

“Okay, then we set a trap for them.”

“They’ve done that three times. Not once did anyone take the bait. The material just sat there, untouched.”

“You know, at some point, you’re going to stop telling me what we can’t do, and start helping,” Taylor said, annoyed.

“I’m just trying to tell you how it is. We’re investigation number six, so this is well-trodden ground.”

“I had this drill instructor once who liked to tell a story about an infantry platoon he served with when he was just out of boot. They wandered into this clearing and the whole platoon was halfway across when tail-gun Charlie stepped on an old pin mine. These things would bounce up and were so small they were really hard to detect. They wouldn’t blow you in half, instead, they’d rip apart your lower torso and upper legs pretty bad. That was the first clue that they were walking across a minefield.”

“Lovely story, what’s your point.”

“Even well-trodden ground can have stuff everyone else missed, and if we’re not careful, we could end up getting our nuts blown off.”

“So what’s your plan?” she asked, ignoring his colorful choice of words.

“I looked at the three previous tries at using bait to lure out these people, and I’ve seen a few problems with it. One: too many people knew about it. The smallest operation I could find had almost twenty people on the inside. Even if no one was dirty, someone could have leaked. Two: none of the prizes were big enough. They know people are looking for them, so they’re going to be cautious about everything. What we need to do is have a plan with the fewest number of people in the know and bring in something that, even if it is a trap, is too big for them to pass up.”

“I find it doubtful there’s anything big enough to be worth that. I mean, the larger we make the bait, the more they’re going to smell a trap. People who are this good aren’t going to take that kind of bait.”

“They will if the prize is big enough. They’ll convince themselves it’s worth it.”

“I’ll ask again, a prize like what?”

“Did you know that the military sends pallets of cash to the Middle East every month, to do things like pay contractors, pay bribes to locals, and reimbursement? I think the largest was just after the fall of Baghdad and was something like twelve billion. Now, I’m not thinking that large, but if we have one of the smaller shipments come through here, they won’t care that it’s a trap. A pallet with fifty million in cash on it, sitting in a warehouse? They won’t pass it up. This won’t be like selling off a pallet of ammo or guns, this is cash. As they say in the movies, this is getting out of the life kinda money.”

“The movies are the only place you see a stupid ass plan like this happening. No one’s going to authorize something like this.”

“We only have to convince one person. Are you forgetting we were sent here by the President of the United States? We’re already at the top and if she says to do it, they’ll do it. Besides, as desperate as they are to make sure their multi-billion dollar budget gets through, they’ll risk it.”

“And you’re suggesting we don't let anyone know about it?”

“Well, everyone will know about the shipment. It comes with guards and all kinds of hoopla, which is great. We want that kind of attention. As for it being a trap? No, we tell no one. Maybe the general, since he’ll need to cover for us with anyone else, to at least make it look plausible to them. There won’t be any leaks this time, and if there are, I think they’ll still go for it. If they don’t, the money will still ship out to the Middle East, and no one gets upset.”

“I don’t know, I can think of a couple of dozen ways this blows up in our faces.”

“Yeah, but I can’t think of a couple of dozen ways to catch these guys. I could only think of one, and this is it.”

“We’re going to have to make some calls.”

“No kidding,” Taylor said.

Convincing Whitaker had been the easy part. Now came the real work.

Getting the right people on the phone took longer than even Taylor had predicted. His original plan was to call Caldwell and have her clear the way for them, but this wasn’t like when she was a Senator. He couldn’t just call up her cell phone and tell her aide to shut up and put the Senator on the phone.

Even for someone cleared, there were layers of people he had to go through to set up a call with the President. Part of that clearance was letting her chief of staff know what he wanted to talk about. Although Taylor remained circumspect, it became clear pretty quickly that they needed more than just the President to make this happen, which delayed things even longer, as the various schedules were worked out.

It was getting late in the day when he finally ended up on a conference call with the President, her chief of staff, two of her advisors, General Leland, and the Secretary of Defense.

“Okay John, we’re all here and you’ve got about fifteen minutes until my next meeting. What was this about a plane full of money?”

“We need to set up bait to draw out these black marketeers you asked us to track down …”

“We’ve already had investigators try that,” the Secretary said, interrupting him.

“Yes, Sir, I’m aware of that. What I need is bait big enough that they can’t ignore it, even if they know it’s a trap. I assume you know about the cash shipments that happen every month to Baghdad, Madam President?”

“I do,” she said, sounding weary.

“What I want is to have one of those shipments come through Fort Chilton before continuing on to the Middle East. I know it sometimes travels with a unit being deployed overseas as security, and the men currently undergoing readiness training here are scheduled to be shipped out this week. The units heading that way from here could be the official reasoning for having that money go through the fort here on its way to the Middle East.”

“Am I to understand you want to use almost fifty million in taxpayer dollars as bait for these criminals, Mr. Taylor?” General Leland said.

“That’s exactly what I want to do, General. The army has tried to catch them five times, and they’ve tried bait every time. The stolen materials remain untraceable and the murders so far seem to be a dead-end as well. We need to draw them out if we’re going to catch them, and for that we need bait big enough they’ll ignore their concerns about it being a trap.”

“Do you know how many people are involved in something like this? If you send a fake shipment of cash, word will get out, regardless.”

“I don't want it to be a fake shipment of cash. I thought I was pretty clear on that. We need the actual money headed to the Middle East to come through here. This will just be a small side journey for it, everything else needs to be on the up and up. We need actual orders cut and everything to follow routine procedures. We plan on telling no one here besides General Lane, and it would probably be best if he was ordered not to reveal that this is in fact bait to anyone else. I don’t even want his clerk to know what we’re doing.”

“I’m sorry John, but I’m confused. You just said that the criminals would know that this is a trap. If they know it’s a trap, why bother going through all the trouble to keep it secret?”

“I believe I said they’ll think it’s a trap, ma’am. I also said that, if the prize is big enough, they’ll ignore their concerns and try for it anyway. Believing it’s a trap, and knowingit is, are two different things. They might still try for it if they knowit’s a trap; but if they only think it is, then I’m certain they’ll make a play for it, regardless of their fears. To really sell it though, we need this unit to be the only one in the country that's shipping off to the sandbox this week, which gives us the reason for the money to come through here.”

“Do you know how much coordination it takes to move units halfway around the globe? Throwing that schedule off will cause problems all down the line for months.”

“I’m aware of that, General, but having your budget suddenly slashed would do the same thing, wouldn’t it?”

“This is a pretty big gamble, John. We sent you to help stop bad press coming out of there. If we lose fifty million dollars, the bad press around the black market will seem trivial in retrospect.”

“I’m not going to lose it, ma’am. We can pull this off.”

The line went silent, which probably meant someone muted it on her end to try and convince her it was a terrible plan.

“You know you’re taking a huge risk with this? It’s easy to say we won’t lose any of their money than to actually make that true.”

“We’ll just have to be careful,” Taylor said before going quiet as the line clicked back on.

“John, we’ll have the shipment heading that way today, along with orders for General Lane. Please, be careful out there. We need this business cleared up, and we need it cleared up soon.”

“We’re working on it, Ma’am.”