Taylor didn’t press anymore, but if he had to guess, he would have also bet that Graf was single. There wasn’t anything specific, aside from the long hours the officer seemed to put in, but Taylor was still confident he was right.
“So you were saying, before, about your theory on what’s happening. Do you honestly think the shootout that killed Sharp is connected to the Wissler's?”
“Yes. Nothing else makes sense.”
“That’s just a guess, though. We’ve seen nothing that would actually prove a connection.”
“True, at least not yet. We’ll find it, though. Besides the fact that there are too many people involved in this now to keep it a secret forever, it’s also too active. I don’t know what yet, but I’m fairly certain we’re headed towards something breaking.”
“What makes you so certain?”
“Because whoever’s behind the guys staying in that apartment has been too active and is ramping up their activity. I know you said the guys at the storage locker were just local criminals, but they didn’t just happen to be there, waiting for someone to open a storage locker. When we pulled in, there was another car loading stuff into a storage locker at the other end, and they looked like they’d been there for a while. Those guys never bothered them. They were waiting for someone to open that one locker. All of this feels like someone has a specific agenda.”
“But wh...,” Graf started to say as Taylor's phone rang.
“Hold on a sec,” Taylor said, pulling out his phone.
Answering it, Bryant’s voice came through the other side, “Taylor?”
“Yeah, what’s up?”
“I got the information you wanted on those guys.”
“Okay, although I might have sent you on a wild goose chase. I’m pretty certain those guys weren’t working for the Russians.”
“You’re right about that, although one of them was former Russian army, which is probably where he got the tattoo, but that’s just a coincidence. These guys were muscle for hire operating all across Europe, mostly for criminal organizations. The other print you gave me belonged to a disgraced former French officer. You said there was a third shooter, and these two were known to operate with another retired soldier, this time from Germany. The German’s currently wanted by Interpol for the murder of a French labor activist who’d been causing trouble for a land developer. His death basically removed all opposition. Local authorities are fairly certain the developer was behind the man's murder, and the German had been hired to do the deed, but he dropped off the radar before they could question him.”
Taylor froze, his eyes traveling across to Graf’s back as the officer continued digging through papers on his desk.
“Taylor, you still there?” Bryant said.
Taylor still didn’t respond. His brain was slowly, painfully, clicking pieces into place, and cursing himself for being so thick. Graf had lied about the three gunmen. These weren’t local thugs. The two bodies they had were both foreign nationals. They were both known guns for hire, and from the sound of it were professionals brought in when something extra was needed.
What they weren’t was local criminals. There was no way Graf had just made a mistake. He might have missed their military connection he might have missed their criminal history that went beyond local crimes. He wouldn’t have missed that they weren’t even German.
Graf hadn’t made a mistake, he’d lied. Taylor could only think of one reason why Graf would have lied about something like that, and it explained a lot of things. It explained how those guys had known what storage locker to be waiting at since there hadn’t been any clue to it even existing until Taylor found the receipt. Graf’s injured arm, still in a sling, was a ricochet and almost certainly an accident. They’d been there to either scare off Taylor or, more likely, kill him. Taylor had led Graf to information he could possibly use to track down Whitaker and had become a liability. Whitaker was clearly more clever than that since nothing in it had led him to her, but he wouldn’t have known that at the time.
There probably had been information in there, but at a guess, it was information that would have led to Graf’s employers. Information that Graf, once he had possession of it, was able to remove before Taylor or anyone else had gotten a chance to look at what was in there. If Graf was involved, anything of note would have been removed before Taylor got to look at it.
What all these details did point to was that Graf wasn’t in charge. He was working for someone else, either covering up Fredricks murder or murdering Fredrick for someone else and then covering up his own crime.
Taylor’s hand finally started moving towards his back, where the gun he’d gotten from Bryant currently sat. He only got about halfway there when Graf turned around, weapon pointed at Taylor’s gut.
“Hang up the phone and throw it over here.”
Taylor disconnected and tossed the phone at Graf’s feet, who looked at it quickly to ensure it wasn’t still on.
“Turn around and go down on your knees. Interlace your fingers behind your head and cross your ankles,” Graf said.
Taylor silently cursed himself. As soon as Bryant’s information conflicted with Graf’s, he should have acted. The second he’d heard it, Taylor knew in his gut that Graf had played him, but he second-guessed himself. Maybe it was because he’d spent time with Graf, or maybe the aftermath of the shooting of Qasim had left Taylor subconsciously unsure of his own gut reactions. Whichever it was, that pause could very well turn out fatal.
“So you’ve been behind this whole thing? Did you kill Fredrick too, or were you brought in just to deal with Whitaker?”
“Do you really think I’m going to stand here and explain everything
