‘That’s bullshit, Kenny, and you know it. I was doing my job. Following a line of inquiry and trying not to let my personal feelings get in the way of that.’
He started shuffling again. Didn’t look at her.
‘I’ll quite happily snap the cuffs on him if the time comes for it. But right now he might be able to help us find out who did this. Because we’re no closer now than when we started.’
‘He’s poison,’ he said, looking at her now.
She decided to ask him straight out. It felt like he wanted to tell her anyway. ‘What is it with you and him?’
Armstrong watched as more forensics drew up at the kerb.
‘I had a good mate who was undercover. Maybe three years ago now. Anyway, Parker found out and stitched him up. Made him look like a dirty cop and he went inside for eighteen months. Lost his job, his pension and his wife.’ Armstrong looked down the street, seeing something much further than the house at the end of the road. ‘He killed himself when he came out. First day, in fact.’
‘How do you know it was Parker?’
Armstrong gave her a look.
‘I’d take him over a thousand Frank Parkers.’
He left her and went back into the house.
The day dragged long. Time stretched out interminably. Irvine left Armstrong on scene at around five-thirty, he not saying very much to her now after the argument about Parker. She could do without his mood.
Back at Pitt Street she was surprised to see Liam Moore still at his desk. She told him that they were getting exactly nowhere: every witness smeared from the face of the planet.
‘You’ve got to give him credit,’ Moore told her. ‘I mean, he is committed to this scorched earth policy of wiping out everyone and anyone who can connect him to the bad drugs. It’s impressive in its singular purpose.’
‘Impressive?’
He shrugged his massive shoulders.
‘It’s all relative.’
‘I suppose.’
‘What about this Parker guy? Think he can come up with anything?’
‘I don’t know. I only met him the once.’
‘Keep an open mind. Armstrong will get over it.’
‘Yes, boss.’
Moore snorted, leaned back in his chair and stretched. Irvine waited for the chair to break under his bulk. She was grateful it held out.
Moore looked at his watch and then out at the almost empty office outside. Most everyone had gone home already. ‘Getting late,’ he told Irvine.
She looked around at the office then at her own watch. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
‘Go home. Nothing more to do tonight.’
She stood and opened the door of Moore’s office.
‘And Becky,’ he said behind her. ‘We will get this guy.’
She turned back to look at him and nodded. Not sure that he was right.
7
It had been a frustrating morning for Logan and Cahill. The four D. Hunters that Bruce had tracked down turned out to have no remote connection to either Tim Stark or the FBI. They were a housewife in Broomfield, an attorney who worked for the public defender’s office, a construction worker who was holidaying in Vegas for the week and a fifteen-year-old high school student. They had known the details of the individuals from the information Bruce had given them. And it turned out that they were exactly what the records showed.
‘Dead end,’ Cahill said as they got in the car after the last house call with the teenager’s mother.
‘What did you expect? That it was some sort of code name?’
Cahill gave Logan a pained look.
‘So, now are you going to tell the FBI about it?’
‘Why? It’s a dead end.’
‘It is in Denver. But maybe it wasn’t supposed to be restricted to the city?’
From the look on Cahill’s face, Logan figured that the thought had not occurred to his friend.
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Cahill said.
Logan shook his head.
‘Jesus,’ Cahill went on. ‘How stupid do I feel.’
Logan told him not to worry about it.
‘But we’ve done what you came to do. You got an answer on Tim and Melanie can rest a bit easier now. Let’s go home.’
Cahill gripped the steering wheel.
‘Maybe we should talk to Webb again,’ he said. ‘Tell him what we found out.’
‘I think that would be sensible.’
Cahill started the car up and pulled out from the kerb. Logan checked his phone and saw that he had two voicemail messages: one from Irvine and one from Ellie. He listened to both and wanted to be back home with them.
‘What time is it?’ Cahill asked him.
Logan checked his watch and said it was after three.
‘Okay, let’s get back to the room to get freshened up, then we’ll grab an early dinner. We can go see Webb tomorrow.’
‘And arrange flights back home?’
‘Maybe.’
Logan wasn’t convinced.
Logan took the laptop from his bag and went to the bar in the hotel to wait for Cahill to finish up in the bathroom. He ordered a bottle of locally brewed wheat beer — Easy Street — and sat at a table by the window, looking out on to the street. The beer was good.
He put the laptop on the table and opened it, settling back in his seat to read the newspaper he had bought that morning while he waited for the computer to boot. The first couple of pages were taken up by some story about illegal campaign donations in a local election. Seemed to Logan like politicians were the same the world over.
The computer beeped, waiting for him to input a password. He typed it in and connected to the Internet via the hotel’s Wi-Fi connection.
He was annoyed by the futility of their search today for the elusive D. Hunter, so he found a local phone directory and typed the name into the search box.
The search returned two of the people they had checked out today, a whole bunch of other, plain old ‘Hunter’ entries, one Dr Hunter and a law firm — Dutton Hunter Green. He thought that the law firm might be more of a possibility than the others so searched again for its own website and then scrolled through the names of all the lawyers. Nothing jumped out at him.
He tried a new Google search: ‘Hunter, Denver’. It returned over a hundred pages of results. He skimmed through the first fifteen pages before he saw one that caught his attention. It was an article from the same newspaper ten years ago — about a young police officer injured in a bank robbery which had descended into a gunfight. It had been an FBI operation that he stumbled into before his very first shift as a uniformed cop. His name was Jacob Hunter.
Logan read the story twice, something nagging at his mind. There was a quote from the Chief of Detectives about the investigation into the shooting.
