and I. A great and important responsibility.”
“If you say so.”
“I can tell a lot about a man by his eyes. But yours tell me nothing.”
“That should bring you some degree of comfort,” Koller offered. “It means I have no agenda other than the one you pay me to have.”
“And if somebody were to pay you more money to have a different agenda?”
The man, closing in on the end of his sixties, close to being a heartbeat from the presidency, was uninspiring. But then, to Koller, most people of stature and power were. Ramsland was a throwback to the days of detente and domino theory backroom politics-a saggy-skinned prune with puffy eyes who overfilled the blue power suit peeking out from underneath his London Fog trench.
It amazed Koller that the balding, silver-haired fool stirred up emotions in anybody other than his mother, let alone a majority of the free world. Koller kept his eyes fixed on the man, and had a brief flash as to what he would look like with his lungs full of sarin. Still, underneath Ramsland’s doughy exterior, Koller sensed toughness, and warned himself not to lose sight of that observation. Guys who played chicken with tanks and missiles tended to have balls.
“I might not be a patriot like yourself, but what I am is a professional. A consummate professional with my own set of laws. At the moment, you are protected under those laws. Whatever you have to say here you can say in confidence.”
Ramsland took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“Okay, Mr. Koller. I know that by torching Jillian Coates’s place we violated one of your laws and placed you in some jeopardy. But she had gone on air with some potentially damaging information, and we felt we had to act quickly.”
“I know much more about the woman than you do, believe me. All you did was make her more determined than ever to keep investigating things. I’ve had to start following her to make certain she doesn’t make any progress.”
“We had intended to follow her, but with what you’re costing us, and the small size of our group, we just didn’t have the resources.”
“What you did was panic.”
“Okay, okay. We panicked. But I need to tell you that our concerns about Ms. Coates weren’t entirely unjustified.”
“Oh?”
“A week or so ago there was a security breach at a downtown VA facility. A kid, a black kid in his early teens, no less, accessed the computer system and started digging around for information about an individual connected to Jericho.”
“How is Coates involved?”
“The kid’s name is Reggie Smith. He’s fourteen. He has a decent-sized rap sheet from his habit of hacking computers. He lives with a foster mother and father in Baltimore. Living near them is a family friend, a doctor named Garrity.”
“Nicholas Garrity. I know, I know.”
“Jesus, you
“So let me get this straight. A fourteen-year-old kid got information from the VA computers that you couldn’t have deleted?”
“Actually, the truth is we couldn’t find it. That goes back to what I said about manpower. We don’t always have the resources to bypass proper channels.”
“Go on.”
“So, Garrity. He’s in the VA system as having severe PTSD. That’s-”
“I know what it is,” Koller cut in. “Is Garrity part of Jericho’s concerns?”
“Indirectly, yes.”
“Is Jillian Coates?”
“She wasn’t, but she became a player once she began sniffing around for her sister’s killer. That’s what led her to Garrity.”
“So, you want me to kill them?” Koller offered up their lives with the same emotion he would have used to order a Grand Slam breakfast at Denny’s.
“No,” Ramsland said, “I’ve got our people watching Garrity and his partner, June Wright, and their medical bus. Wright is Reggie Smith’s foster mother. There aren’t enough of us to follow them all twenty-four seven, but we are keeping an eye on them. Your assignments for Jericho have been geographically arranged to keep the media spotlight away from any pattern in your marks. We can’t risk igniting curiosities by having anything happen to Jillian Coates or people close to her, which Garrity has now become.”
“If she gets in the way, she’s dead,” Koller said. “That’s what you get for stirring her up.”
“Okay, then let us handle Garrity. I’m betting he’s a patriot like myself. He’ll understand what we’re up against here and back off.”
“If not?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Whatever you say. So if it’s not Garrity or Coates, why did you bring me out here?”
“The kid has caused one of our people to go squirrelly. The guy’s a small cog in our machine, but he’s become a weak link.”
“It will cost you a million two,” he said, “an extra fifty if you want the job done quickly.”
“Quick as possible.”
“Your call. Same rules apply. I can get what information I need about the mark off of eBay.”
“Don’t you even want to know who it is?”
“In time.”
“I’ll just give you his name so you can get started.”
Koller sighed. “As you wish.”
“He’s a VA claims processor named MacCandliss. Phillip MacCandliss.”
CHAPTER 33
Nick had never set foot in Lieutenant Detective Don Reese’s office before that day. Given the circumstances surrounding their initial meeting, discretion was always an unspoken agreement between them. But when Nick phoned, already en route to the second district’s station house, Reese did not bother asking what he needed. Nick’s request to meet was reason enough for the detective to rearrange his schedule.
The uniformed officer assigned to reception duty, seated in a closet-sized room behind four inches of Plexiglas, was in her early twenties. After phoning Reese, she instructed Nick and Jillian through the intercom to take seats on the molded plastic chairs lining the foyer.
Tucked securely under Nick’s arm was a large manila envelope, thick with confidential records from six different Singh Center patients. Over a one-year period, four years ago, each of them had been treated for a self- inflicted shotgun blast to the face. Examined individually, there was nothing that stood out about any of the cases except for the violence and utter destruction of their trauma. However, beyond the differing names and Social Security numbers, these six cases were identical, right down to the CT scans, cardiograms, and progress notes. In addition, the lists of hundreds of supplies and medications, obtained through Shelby Stone purchasing, were also identical. The likelihood of even two cases having such similarities was probably akin to the odds of winning the Powerball lottery seven or eight times in a row.
Nick and Jillian knew they had stumbled upon something illegal, but they suspected much more was behind the charts than mere larceny-even larceny on a fairly grand scale. Who were these patients and did they have anything to do with Manny or Umberto? Those were questions Nick hoped Don Reese could help answer.
