“I’d say he’s been dead about six hours. Looks obvious what killed him, but I’ll let you know anything else I discover during autopsy. Sheriff, I’m real sorry about the deputy. I guess you’re going to be the one to speak to his family?”
“Yeah, me and Sheriff Watson of Plackett, that’d be the right way to do it. A case of the devil you know—Kane’s murder is going to shake up Watson, even though he was jealous of him, hated it that everyone liked him better and respected him more. You know someone as long as he knew Kane Lewis, it burns a hole, you know? Oh, yeah, Sheriff Watson was also Kane Lewis’s brother-in-law; Kane was married to his sister, Glory. What a mess.” He shook their hands and walked away, muttering to himself. He turned back to Savich. “This is the second victim murdered with a ridiculous witch’s knife. What’s going on here, Agents?”
“We’ll find out,” Savich said.
Watson, Sherlock, and Haimes watched the techs wheel out the big OTR. Savich didn’t think it would fit into the ME’s van and wondered how they’d get it to the morgue.
Sherlock said, “Dane and Griffin are going to the trucking company that’s under contract by the post office, to interview Brakey Alcott, the driver who delivered the OTRs early this morning.” Sherlock pulled out her tablet. “Brakey’s real name is Joseph. Says here on his Facebook page that he ended up with the Brakey nickname after he stopped his dad’s pickup too fast at age sixteen and sent his dad through the windshield, broke his dad’s neck, but thankfully he pulled through. Brakey’s twenty-four years old, fairly new to the job, but reliable and well liked. The truck company can trace his movements.”
It didn’t matter that she’d been involved in a terrorist attack only hours before, Sherlock knew how to focus. She knew what to find out and she did it fast. Savich said, “Time is the key here—the killer stabbed Deputy Lewis, then he had to get his body into the truck, bury the body in an OTR and cover it with parcels, relock the truck and skedaddle before Brakey Alcott arrives. All this with no one noticing. So had he planned all along to use Brakey’s truck? The killer took a really big risk, and for what? Our finding the body looks more like a blunder to me, by somebody on the inside.”
Sherlock said, “Ellie Moran said Brakey Alcott seemed off this morning, and her eyes implied more than that, right, Jeremy?”
“Maybe, but please remember she’s got a reputation for gossip, I hear, likes a good story. Count on Deputy Lewis’s murder being all over Reineke by ten a.m. and all over Plackett by noon.”
Savich and Sherlock left Special Agent Jeremy Haimes and walked back to the parking lot behind the post office. Savich said as he opened the Porsche’s passenger door for Sherlock, “Why set up this elaborate, bizarre way to get rid of the body? Why go to the trouble of burying him under parcels bound for the Reineke post office? It’s complicated, obviously requires intimate knowledge of the postal operation. And it puts Brakey Alcott right in the center of the spotlight. If the murderer could have forced Brakey Alcott to stab Deputy Lewis in front of half the town and then forget all about it—as Walter Givens did yesterday in the Rayburn building—why not deliver Brakey up to the world, too?”
Sherlock said, “Let’s stop and talk about it at that café I saw on Jackson Street. We can have some tea. Truth is, I’m still a little wrung out from yesterday, and a short rest would be nice.”
? ? ?
FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, Savich was drinking the last of his tea when Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith called. “Brakey Alcott, the driver, always stops six miles out of Richmond at a small diner off the highway called Milt’s. He’s in there when it opens, stays for ten minutes, drinks two black coffees, eats one bear claw, chats up the waitress. He goes back for lunch on most days. He’s nearly got her ready to go to the movies with him.
“The truck is locked at the distribution center after they fill it up with parcels, and it stays locked until he unlocks it to deliver the OTRs to the Reineke post office, his first stop of the day.
“I checked the lock—not tampered with, which means our killer had a key to the truck. So how’d he get it? The private contractor the Richmond distribution center uses is the Paltrow Trucking company. The drivers are hired by the trucking company, but the trucks themselves are left at the distribution center, except when they need servicing.
“The truck keys are left on a board inside the truck bay. The OTRs are loaded up early in the morning, between three and four a.m. Then the drivers simply pick up their keys on the way out. It’s a close-knit group, so making a copy of the truck key would be difficult unless everyone knew you, so I’m thinking one of the drivers or an employee.”
Savich said, “So no report of any strangers around within the past week?”
“No. In fact . . .”
Savich smiled into his cell. “Spit it out, Griffin.”
“It seems to me the killer has to be connected to the post office or to the trucking company. No one else would know their operations well enough, know the schedule and all that. So I’m thinking Brakey Alcott, for whatever reason, has got to be connected, maybe even be the killer, otherwise the whole operation has too many unknowns. If Brakey doesn’t pan out, I’ll move on to the other employees at the distribution center and the post office, but I’ll tell you, Savich, it feels like he’s at center court.”
Savich said, “But unlike Walter Givens, who killed Sparky Carroll in front of fifty witnesses, this murder was an attempt to hide the killer’s identity. When you find Brakey Alcott, Griffin, see if he, like Givens, has no idea that he even could have committed the murder. Keep it low-key, Griffin—you need his help, that sort of approach, very nonthreatening. If you think he’s another dupe like Givens, you need to keep him close, so take him back to the Hoover Building.
“Keep in touch. Sherlock and I are going to interview George ‘Sparky’ Carroll’s wife. Then we’ll head back to Washington, see what Brakey Alcott has to say.”
“We’d never be thinking about it like this except for the Athame murder weapon.”
He was right, and Savich wondered who had such power to make two men kill and not remember doing it.
26 FEDERAL PLAZA
NEW YORK CITY
Thursday morning
Special Agent in Charge Milo Zachery faced the roomful of agents from an alphabet soup of agencies—FBI, Homeland Security, JFK security, NYPD, NSA, ATF. There was relentless pressure from every level—his bosses, national leaders, the press—but the urgency each of them felt came from knowing there could be other attacks, and soon. The president had spoken to the nation two hours after the attacks yesterday, and the vice president, obviously still shaken, spoke eloquently of what it was like to be at ground zero.