CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
I woke feeling like a regiment of infantry had walked across my head during the night. Tired as I was, I hadn’t slept well. Images of J.D. flashed through my sleep, vivid dreams of her in a dark place from which she could not escape. Still, I’d stayed in bed long past my usual time. It was almost nine when I rolled out.
I showered, shaved, and stumbled into the kitchen. Jock was there drinking coffee and reading the morning paper. He looked as if he’d slept through the night without any worries. I thought it must be a habit he’d learned during all those years of clandestine operations.
“Got a question,” I said. “Were you really going to strip the clothes off Nigella last night if she hadn’t started talking?”
“You’re a pervert.”
“I’m just asking.”
“No. I wouldn’t have touched her. I just wanted to scare the hell out of her. I think I succeeded. Why?”
I grinned at him. “Just wondering.”
“Right. You were thinking about her naked.”
The man had a point. He went back to his paper. I grabbed a couple of packaged pastries and popped them into the microwave. Such was breakfast when I didn’t have time for the Blue Dolphin. I got a cup of coffee and joined Jock at the table.
“The director got a lot done on Thanatos,” he said. “It was waiting for me this morning when I opened my e-mail.”
“What’ve you got?”
He went to the living room and returned with a sheaf of printouts. “The most interesting part of this is the makeup of the teams. There were twelve men in each and there were only three teams. They were dubbed, Team Alpha, Team Beta, and Team Charlie. Desmond was part of Team Charlie. Look at the roster.”
“Damn,” I said. “Desmond, Brewster, and Fleming were all part of the same team. This isn’t a coincidence. But there are only seven names here. What about the others?”
“Five of them are dead.”
“Any information on the living members?”
Jock handed me another sheet of paper. “Names and current addresses.”
I looked at the list. “Are you sure the other five are dead?”
“Yeah. I checked. Two were killed in Vietnam before the end of the war, one died in a car wreck a year after he came home, and two died of cancer.”
“Why are the team members kids being killed?”
“Don’t know, but I’d like to find out if any of the others have had deaths in their families.”
“I’ll get Bill Lester onto this. He can query the police departments in the towns where they live. Maybe something will turn up.”
“We need to warn these guys. Somebody is targeting them.”
I called Bill Lester and gave him the names and addresses of the men who’d served on Charlie Team in Operation Thanatos. “It can’t be a coincidence that the children of three men who served on the same team are now dead,” I said.
“I’ll get right on this and get back to you,” said the chief. “And before you ask, the answer is no. We haven’t made any progress in finding J.D.”
I hung up and my phone rang again. Debbie.
“Good morning, sunshine,” I said. “You’re up early.”
“I spent most of the night on Marsh LLC. I thought you’d want it first thing this morning.”
“What’d you find?”
“It’s a tangled mess. Marsh LLC is owned by a company incorporated in Ohio called BriteSun, Inc. That corporation has only one officer, the president whose name is Victor Chaffin. The office address is a post office box in Columbus.”
I interrupted. “What about the registered agent for service of process?”
“Both Marsh and BriteSun use one of those companies that serve as registered agents for lots of corporations all over the country.”
“Okay. Go on.”
“BriteSun does not seem to have any business operations, and other than the listing on the Ohio Secretary of State’s website, there’s nothing on it anywhere.”
“Then why the hell was somebody trying to get me to look into Marsh?”
“There is one thing I found that may have some bearing on this mess.”
“What?”
“Marsh LLC is shown as the owner of a piece of property in the Bahamas.”
“How did you ferret that out?”
“BriteSun was incorporated in Ohio about twenty years ago. The check that was written for this year’s annual corporate fee was drawn on a bank in Columbus. The signature on the check was illegible and there was no printed name on it. I hacked into the bank’s computers and found the account. It was set up by the same person who is shown as the president of BriteSun, Victor Chaffin.”
“That’s interesting.”
“There’s more. That checking account is only used once a year to keep BriteSun active. That is until recently when somebody put a million dollars into the account. It’s listed as ‘capital infusion.’ Marsh was formed a couple of days later, the million dollars was transferred by check to Marsh. I got the routing numbers off the endorsements on the back of the check and traced that to a bank in Atlanta.”
“And you hacked their computer.”
“Damn right. Marsh wrote a check to the trust account of a law firm in West Palm Beach for guess how much.”
“One million dollars.”
“Bingo.”
“And you found out what it was for.”
“Law firm computers have notoriously bad security. This one closed on the Bahamian property for Marsh LLC.”
“Where is the property?”
“It’s a house in Marsh Harbour. In the Abacos.” She gave me the street address.
“Damn, you’re good,” I said.
“That’s not all I got. Victor Chaffin died five years ago. He’s listed in the Social Security death index, and I found his obituary in the Columbus Dispatch. He was the founder of Chaffin Consultants, an engineering firm that was one of the first bought by Desmond Engineering Consultants when it started expanding.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“Bye.” She hung up, and I related the conversation to Jock.
“If she’s able to hack into bank computers, she’s better than I thought,” he said. “The agency’s hackers are the best in the world and they have trouble with bank computer security. Does she have any particular training in this stuff ?”
“No. It’s just something she got into and developed a real talent. She’s usually too wired to sleep when she gets home from work, so she stays up and trolls the Internet. I think she’s made some friends who spend their entire lives breaking into other people’s computers. It’s like a big game. Get in and get out. As long as they do no damage, they figure it’s all in fun.”
“But they can find a lot of private information on people. That could be dangerous if they mess with the wrong folks.”
“I agree, but she doesn’t listen to reason sometimes.”
“Maybe because you’re the enabler,” he said. “You seem to ask her for help on a regular basis.”
I got another cup of coffee, sipped it. “You may be right. I’ll be more careful about what I ask her to do in the future. But for now, what the hell is the connection between a house in the Bahamas and what we’re looking into?”
I went to my computer and put the Bahamian address into Google maps. I found the place, but it wasn’t in Marsh Harbour proper. The house sat alone on a small island off the northern tip of the peninsula that held the town. The only access to the island would be by boat. It was isolated and secure. A good place for people who didn’t want to be bothered.
My computer pinged, letting me know that an e-mail had arrived. I opened it. The message was: “I’m OK. Your buddy Tripp would love this place. Trust me.”
“Jock,” I said. “Look at this.”
“Damn. At least she’s okay or says she is. Who’s this buddy of yours, Tripp?”
“Tripp Harrison. He’s an artist. I’ve never met the man, but I love his paintings.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I’ve got three of his works, two limited-edition prints and one original oil. They’re all here in the house. J.D. likes them as much as I do.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“All three of the paintings are of scenes in the Abacos.”