‘She came up to me at the bar at Pete’s.’
‘She knew who you were.’
‘Yeah, she just started talking to me. She said the bartender told her my name. She went home with me, man. Don’t try to tell me that was planned too. I know it wasn’t.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’
They stared at each other, Raveneau wondering if he was lying again but feeling he wasn’t. ‘It’ll be a lot more than just one interview. You heard me when I said lie detector, right?’
‘I heard you.’
‘So you’ve got to be patient, and then they’ll get you out of here. You only talk to Special Agent Coe about that, OK? He’s the one.’
‘I know him.’
‘I know you do. He’s the one. OK, I’m going to get Coe. This is it, man. Don’t blow your one last chance.’
FORTY-SEVEN
The FBI flew Raveneau home late that night and the next morning he nursed a coffee in his early morning meeting with Lieutenant Becker. Becker held up an invoice from the film expert, Kelso. He shook it and the paper rattled.
‘I don’t get this invoice. You went outside. You hired Kelso. I thought the combination of our video unit and the crime lab had this case covered. Why did we need to go to an outside consultant, especially one I thought we all agreed not to use any more? Why him and what about the FBI? I thought they looked at the videotape.’
‘They’ve looked at photos and some old Kodachrome slides. They’ll take a look at the videotape when they can but they’re backed up with other film analysis.’
‘How can Kelso charge this much?’
Kelso probably put in twice as many hours, Raveneau thought. But Kelso would negotiate. Kelso was film- obsessed. He didn’t care about anything else. He wore the same oversized T-shirt, shorts, sandals, and faded Giants baseball cap, rain or shine. He was overweight with a Santa Claus beard and a personal hygiene regimen that guaranteed him a private seat on a crowded bus. But he was a trove of information.
‘What did he do that we couldn’t do here?’
‘He validated that the videotape wasn’t a fake and that it was a copy made at the time. Without any information from me he came back with dates of 1987 to 1990 for when it was made and a lot more.’
‘Get his number down and I don’t want to see him in here yelling about getting paid faster. In fact, I don’t want to see him at all.’
Now Becker shifted to Raveneau’s most recent request and Raveneau had a hard time reading him. Becker had quit the police department abruptly after the murder of his brother last year, but enough people, Raveneau included, wanted him back and he was reinstated after a leave of absence. He was different now though, more introspective, quieter.
‘I can’t recommend sending you back to Hawaii without more compelling reasons. Write up your request but don’t submit it. I told the captain what you told me, so he knows there’s a complaint coming. If it arrives as this Candel says it will it won’t sit on my desk more than a day before it goes to the captain. That’s the deal he and I have, and I’m not forwarding any other requests for travel until that’s resolved.’
‘Consider la Rosa going on her own.’
‘You’ve been working the case so I don’t like that idea, and you don’t like it either so don’t waste our time here.’
They left it there and Raveneau’s cell rang as he left Becker’s office.
‘Inspector Raveneau, it’s Barb Haney. I’m sorry to bother you, but I think you might want to know this. My ex-husband, Larry Benhaime, is in San Francisco at the Four Seasons. He’s flying out later this morning and he doesn’t know I’m calling you. He’s in room 417. I just talked to him. He’s planning to stay in his room until a car takes him to the airport. You should catch him before he leaves.’
‘What should I ask him?’
When Raveneau interviewed her in Truckee he knew she had something to tell him, and now maybe it was going to come out. The fluttery hesitancy with which Barbara Haney moved from topic to topic and room to room in the big house in the Martis Valley he read first as nervousness, later as something else.
Raveneau was at the Four Seasons within an hour. He asked the desk to call Benhaime and now watched him step out of the elevator. They shook hands and Benhaime looked more curious than surprised.
‘Inspector, can we talk over breakfast? I’m starving and I can’t come to your police station. I’d miss my flight. What do you say we get some breakfast here and talk?’
Benhaime ordered eggs and toast and coffee, Raveneau coffee. As soon as the waiter walked off with the order Benhaime started talking.
‘First thing is we lied to your inspectors, not something we normally did but this was at the request of your government. Barbara and I worked for the RCMP, Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the branch that preceded CAP, the Counterfeit Analysis Program. We weren’t newly-weds, but we were soon to be married so as a cover it worked. We had the honeymoon in reverse. For Barbara, that was the last undercover op. She had wanted out for awhile and when we married she quit.’
‘Are you still with the Mounties?’
‘Hmm, should have done this straightaway this morning.’
He showed a badge. He showed ID.
‘Different group now, I’m with the Revenue Service, mostly in Asia, mostly in Hong Kong. Copy the numbers if you like. We were to meet Mr Krueger in front of the Ferry Building and we got there well ahead of time. We had him in sight. We were going to buy some counterfeit bills. He was approaching and then was intercepted by another man and headed off with him. We wondered later if the other man impersonated me.
‘We watched a bit and then followed, but far enough back so no one would pick up on us. It’s why we found his body. At that point, the best decision was to walk away, but Barbara wouldn’t have it. So we phoned it in and all the mess that followed came from that decision.’
‘Why didn’t you tell the inspectors?’
‘Your Secret Service asked us not to. They didn’t want to compromise their operation and given that we had already done all we could to help the police it seemed to make sense. But we weren’t as good on our feet as we thought and the one inspector in particular suspected we knew more. Don’t ask me how he knew, but he did. When he flew to Calgary looking to re-interview us we checked with your people first.’
‘The Secret Service?’
‘Yes, they were conducting their own investigation into the killing and on hold with their operation until they learned more. They didn’t come out and say don’t talk with the homicide inspector, but they did strongly imply they wanted us to wait. So we stonewalled him and he all but told us we were lying. He was close to correct but didn’t seem to have facts to back it up.’
‘Inspector Govich?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who in the local Secret Service office knew about this?’
‘A fellow by the name of John Pagen.’
‘What were you going to get out of the meeting with Krueger?’
‘A batch of counterfeit one hundred dollar US bills. People Krueger was working with were doing test runs, exchanging hundred dollar bills for Canadian in Vancouver.’
‘Test runs?’
‘Yes, checking out the bills and the response they got, or more to the point, eh, the response they didn’t get. The bills passed easily. They were a remarkable step up. We were working with your Secret Service on this one and looking for the city of origin, looking for where these bills were bubbling out of. We couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. First ones showed up in Hong Kong, then the Philippines, and the Yanks said North Korea and
