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.
Logan had a thought: if Hunter started in the force ten years ago, maybe he was a detective now.
D. Hunter – Detective Hunter.
That would make sense. What if Tim Stark had seen something that meant this Hunter was somehow involved in whatever the gang he had infiltrated was up to?
He ran a search on ‘Detective Hunter, Denver’, found a recent news story about a disabled veteran who had been found dead in one of the city centre parks. There was a quote from a homicide detective about some potentially related deaths in recent weeks. As usual, the cop was noncommittal.
The cop’s name was Detective Jake Hunter.
‘What do you think?’ Logan asked Cahill back in their room. ‘Maybe it’s him.’
Logan waited while Cahill read the articles Logan had found.
‘I don’t know,’ Cahill said when he was done reading. ‘I mean, why would an undercover FBI agent have an interest in a city homicide detective?’
Logan thought for a moment.
‘Maybe he’s dirty. The detective. Involved with whatever Stark was investigating.’
Cahill scanned the stories for the third time.
‘We need to tell the FBI, right?’ Logan said.
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We don’t know what his part is in all of this. Or if it’s really his name that Tim sent to himself. If he is involved, could be Tim was simply reminding himself that he was someone he needed to speak to about the case. I mean, you remember what Webb said. Tim was using an alias on the flight because his undercover status had been compromised. He must have known the bad guys were after him and maybe he didn’t know how much time he had or whether he’d make it out alive.’
‘Webb didn’t exactly say that, Alex.’
‘He said as much.’
‘If you’re thinking what I know you’re thinking, it’s a bad idea. Let the professionals handle it.’
Cahill put the paper down and stared at Logan.
‘After everything we’ve been through over the last couple of years, you can say that to me without a trace of irony? You’ve seen the so-called professionals at work. Does that give you the confidence to hand something over to them?’
‘Not the FBI.’
‘Same thing so far as I’m concerned. I mean, I’m not about to trust something like this to those guys. I owe it to Tim to do more than that.’