The Bricklayer

THIRTY-FIVE

EVEN THOUGH THE SUN HADN’T FULLY RISEN, TYE DELSON DIDN’T switch on the light in her office as she entered. She went over to the window and raised it as far as she could. The air outside was warmer than in the room, and it felt good. She turned around, took a cigarette from her purse, and lit it. In the flaring light, she was startled to find Vail sitting against the back wall. “Steve, you scared me.”
“Sorry,” he said with intentional insincerity.
“What are you doing here?”
He stood up and carefully placed a handcuff key on the desk.
She calmly took a drag from her cigarette and studied him for a few seconds. His demeanor was somber yet composed, convincing her of the reason for his visit. A smirk tightened her features.
“I didn’t really think I would fool you, not for long anyhow. I haven’t slept since I set you up to kill Radek. I would apologize for that, but I’d be surprised if you felt bad about killing someone like him.” She took another drag, and as she drew it in deeply, a small sob rattled down her throat, revealing she was not as calm as she was trying to appear. “How did you figure it out?”
“I didn’t until I found the key hidden in the radiator. A dozen possibilities occurred to me how it got there, but only one of them made sense. Then when I ran all the little inconsistencies through my head, every one of them made perfect sense.”
“Such as?”
“When Kate and I searched Bertok’s apartment, we found those documents in the bathroom because of the finger smudges on the side of the vanity. I thought maybe the Evidence Recovery Team just wasn’t very good, but since then I’ve worked with them and realized they wouldn’t have missed that. Only a few people knew we were going in a second time, and of course you were one of them. You even delayed us from going in that night, citing not enough probable cause, giving yourself enough time to get in there and plant the evidence. At that point you had Bertok and his keys, so entry was no problem. Then the call to his phone that led us to being on hand for his suicide. That trail was just too textbook. Again, you were one of the few people who knew about the pen register. From the beginning there were indications of insider information. At first I thought it was the Pentad trying to give off that illusion. There were a dozen other things that didn’t make sense until I found that key. You needed it because you had to be locked up when you sent me that video, but then had to get free to get Radek to try to kill me. And then lock yourself up again and hide the key while I was breaking down the door. You had to have it available if something went wrong like a fire starting or both of us lying there dead.”
“It seems like you’ve figured out most of it. But have you asked yourself why I was involved?”
“There are usually only a few basic motives: money or love immediately come to mind.”
“I certainly didn’t love Radek, if that’s what you’re thinking. And the money is in that salvage yard next to where you found Bertok. Under an old car. If that were my motive, would I be telling you that now? In fact, I gave you a way to find it when you asked me where the handcuff key was and I directed you to Radek’s key ring. It was to steer you to the money. You would have figured it out eventually. I even stashed Radek’s phony driver’s license in his car where you’d find it. It would have led you to everything. You didn’t find it?”
“If it wasn’t Radek or the money, what was it?”
“Has the name Michael Vashon come up in your investigation?”
Vail thought for a second. “Is that the inmate they suspected Salton of killing?”
“Salton, Radek, one of them. Michael and I were in love. I had just started with the United States attorney’s office when he was sent to prison for insider trading. It was something he had been involved in briefly a couple of years before we met, and he had forgotten about it. He wasn’t the main subject of the case but a good friend of his was, a guy named Danzinger. Because the trades had been made in Michael’s name, he was the easiest one to charge. They offered him a deal if he’d give up Danzinger, but Michael was a loyal friend and went to prison instead. Don’t get me wrong. Michael saw a way to make some easy money and he broke the law, but he was not a hardened criminal. He was sent to Marion for three years to see if the place wouldn’t change his mind about talking. Unfortunately, it didn’t.”
“What was Radek and Salton’s problem with him?”
She took another drag. “The prison pecking order being what it is, Radek and his crew immediately try to find out what they can get out of Michael. They just smack him around the first time and tell him they’re going to lease him out to other inmates unless he can come up with a better idea. After Michael was involved in the insider-trading stuff, but before he got arrested, was a little more than two years. He was a genius with computers and had gone to work for a company called Investcomp. It was an online investment service and they were designing software for investors. I don’t pretend to understand the technical aspects, but Michael was tasked with testing the finished product, actually to look for flaws in it. What it was supposed to do for the investors was when they brought up a stock on the monitor, it showed a chart of its progress. More important, it provided a green arrow indicating the time to buy and a red arrow when they should sell. Michael found a flaw by which the red arrows could be delayed for a couple of hours. He said it would have taken a major code change to correct it, and since it would have no effect on the software performance for the investors, he never told anyone. He just forgot about it until Radek threatened him. To save himself, he told Radek about the glitch and that if they delayed the red arrow by a couple of hours and then shorted the stock when it went down in response to the Investcomp customers selling off, they would make money.”
“Let me guess. They needed someone on the outside to buy and sell the stocks, and Michael convinced you to do it.”
“He had left a ‘back door’ in the Investcomp system, if you know what that is.”
“A way to circumvent security.”
“That’s right. At first I refused to do it, because I was an assistant United States attorney. It was why we never told anyone about our relationship. But his situation in prison became more desperate by the day, so I gave in and we started shorting the stocks. Nothing big. A couple of thousand here and there. Enough to keep them off his back. He had less than a year to go for parole.”
“Why did they kill him if he was their golden goose?”
“I don’t know if Investcomp picked up on the delaying trend, or whether as a routine update of the software, they found the flaw or his back door. All of a sudden, Michael couldn’t get in. When he told Radek, Michael said that he went nuts. That was the last time I talked to him.”
“That’s when he was killed,” Vail said.
“Yes. Of course, I had no way of knowing since I wasn’t listed anywhere in the prison records. A couple of days after our last conversation, the phone rings. It’s Radek. He’s vague, but he’s talking to me like I’m his girlfriend, telling me he’ll be out soon, and he’s looking forward to seeing me. I’m freaked out, but I keep my cool and ask him to have Michael call me. The last thing he said to me was ‘Oh, by the way, Michael was beaten to death today,’ and hangs up. Just like that.”
“So Radek gets out and has you as a ready-made accomplice for his extortion. One with the right connections. And you can’t object because he’ll implicate you in the Investcomp scam.”
“Exactly, but it wasn’t quite that hands-off. The first I learn of his plan is when I wake up a couple of months later in the middle of the night, and he’s standing in my bedroom. He introduces himself and proceeds to rape me. And I’m not talking about forcing me to have sex, I’m talking about how they do it in prison, starting with a beating and ending…well, I’ll leave that to your imagination. Then he rolls over, lights a cigarette, and starts talking to me, again like I’m his girlfriend. That’s when he starts laying out the extortion plan, and how I’m an important part of it. I must have looked incredulous, because he slapped me so hard I was almost knocked out. He never said anything about murdering people. But that was his MO. The plan presented never sounded that violent, until you were in the middle of it.”
“I assume he chose his murder victims by who was in the news and at war with the FBI.”
“All but Arthur Bellington.” Tye’s eyes started to well up. “Then, I guess because he hadn’t degraded me enough with the rapes, he tells me I have to pick the third victim. He said it was so I’d be as guilty as the rest of them, but it was really about finishing the destruction of any of my character that might have been left. So I told him he should kill Bellington. I knew he had represented Radek in those armored-car robberies. At first Radek protested, but I told him if he ever became a suspect in the extortion, it was a perfect defense for him. Why would he kill the man who had previously kept him from spending the rest of his life in prison? At that point I wanted Bellington dead for that very reason. Because of him, Radek was out of prison and was able to rape and murder at will.”
“And you were the one who came up with Bertok’s name for them?” Tears started running down her cheeks. She was shaking, unable to speak for a few seconds. “They needed an agent of questionable character; otherwise the Bureau would have known right away that he was not a thief and had been kidnapped. Then they would give the media the whole story of the extortion and murders in an effort to enlist the public’s help in rescuing the agent. Radek would never have gotten another cent.
“I swear, Steve, he was just supposed to be kidnapped by masked gunmen and held until they had the entire five million. If I knew they were going to kill him, I would have come forward right then and taken the consequences. I know that sounds hypocritical because of the others being murdered, but as big a mess as Stan was, he didn’t deserve to die.”
“And you supplied Radek with Pendaran’s undercover name so he could buy the extra Glock gun barrel.”
“Like I showed you, it was in the computer.”
“What about Dan West’s murder? The tape of the conversation between him and his killer made him sound like an agent.”
“That was Salton. We assumed the agent would be wearing a wire and wanted it to look like it was Stan. They worked out the dialogue ahead of time. I helped with that, too.”
“What about Radek’s car with the firebomb rigged in the trunk? How’d you know we’d find it?”
She gave a short, joyless laugh. “If it’s any consolation, you were driving Radek nuts. He was naturally paranoid, but ever since you survived that tunnel drop, he was constantly in fear that you would somehow find him. It was his idea that I go to your hotel and seduce you. When that didn’t happen, it got even worse. You killed Salton, and all that hate Radek had for the FBI was transferred to you. He knew he was the most traceable of the group because of his New Hampshire connection. So they rigged Radek’s car and parked it in front of his house, figuring you’d be the one to find it. And because you had survived before, he decided that each trap they set should have something left behind to lure you to the next one. When you didn’t fall for the car, he left clues to lead you to the building where they could kill you.”
“What about the night you called me in Kate’s room? That had to be Radek.”
“He wanted me to lure you to my place again so he could kill you. When you didn’t bite, he thought he could get you out at the movie ranch the next day. Then when he missed you there, we came up with faking my kidnapping as a way to get the three million dollars back.”
“And that brings us to you having me kill Radek.”
“If there’s one thing I want you to believe, Steve, it’s that I never wanted you to get hurt.”
“I guess when Radek was firing through the door, I should have taken a little more time to realize how kind you were being to me,” Vail said, his expression emotionless.
“After you and Kate—and the elevator—killed the others, it didn’t take a great deal of insight to know that I was next. Although he never told me why, he had me start acting publicly like I was in love with you. I knew it was so when you disappeared with the three million, I would suddenly disappear and it would look like you and I took off together. And if you were found dead in that factory eventually with that other woman, they would have started looking for me. Any way you cut it, I was going to vanish. So I came up with a plan to kill him first. Do you know what GHB is?”
“Liquid Ecstasy.”
“It does give you that euphoric buzz, but it also has a steroid-enhancing effect. You’ve seen the weights. He was always on it. But if you take a little too much, it can put you in a stupor; a lot too much and it’ll put you in a coma. Two of the side effects are combativeness and paranoia, both of which were at their peak in him already. I drugged him into unconsciousness once, but I just didn’t have it in me to kill him. So I figured out a way to have you do it. After he got the three million back, he took it to the auto graveyard to hide it. Then we started drinking to celebrate and, for the first time, had consensual sex. I wanted that so I could claim rape afterward, and prove it. I had put just enough GHB in his drink so he’d pass out. As soon as he nodded off, I staged the chained-to-the-radiator video and sent it to you. I was watching out the window and saw you coming up to the hotel with the shotgun. When I heard you on the stairs, I woke Radek up and told him you were at the door. I knew he would be disoriented and tip his hand too soon. His eyes went crazy, and when he saw the lock turning, he opened fire. I ran to the bedroom, taped my mouth and eyes, and chained myself to the radiator again. I didn’t think that in a million years you’d come alone. I thought it would be a SWAT team. But I should have known better.”
“How did you know I’d find you? The directions weren’t exactly GPS.”
“If you didn’t come in a reasonable amount of time, I would have sent you another video or a short phone call, a little more detailed, or a text, something. That was always a problem—we never knew how much information to feed you. Too much would have made you suspicious, too little and you wouldn’t find your way to where we were trying to direct you.” She lit another cigarette off the stub of the one she was smoking. “You want to know what the most satisfying thing about causing his death was?”
There was a change in her; she now spoke mechanically, totally devoid of emotion. Confession in this case apparently wasn’t good for the soul. Instead the recounting of her complicity was giving her some kind of awful realization, shutting off the defense of emotion.
“What was that?” Vail asked.
“Watching him go through the process of planning these terrible crimes. I had this perverted fascination about the way he went about it. You have to admit they were brilliant. I got caught up in the creativity of it all, occasionally making suggestions. Probably something like Stockholm syndrome. Whatever it was, he actually taught me how to commit unsolvable crimes—well, almost unsolvable. He handed me the tools to bring about his own death. He allowed me to finally get even.”
“So with him dead and the money returned, no one would have known about you,” Vail said.
“That was the plan. I was leaving the United States attorney’s office and getting out of California, maybe the country. Originally when I announced it a couple of months ago, it was with the intention of getting as far away from Radek as possible. As of yesterday, it was to get away from myself, but that’s never possible. Since Radek died, the fact that I’m the only responsible person still alive has been haunting me. The guilt has been increasing constantly. I can’t sleep. That’s why I’m here so early. I can’t eat. I am tortured.” She nodded at the wall where the morning light was finally shining on the framed quote from Martin Luther. “‘Each lie must have seven lies if it is to resemble the truth and adopt truth’s aura,’” she read. “He certainly knew what he was talking about. Funny, isn’t it? I put that up my first day as a warning against those who would lie to me, and I became its prisoner.”
“Maybe it’s time to take it down.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy?” she said. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you could let me turn myself in?” She lit a third cigarette off the one she had exhausted in four long drags.
“I thought you told me you were going to quit smoking.” She sensed something humane in his switch to the trivial observation.
She gave him an exhausted smile. “This is the last one. I promise I’ll quit…forever.”
He searched her eyes. They had suddenly lost the jitteriness that he had seen in them since the day they met. Some resolution had settled in. Vail then realized what she meant.
To her surprise, Vail stood up and turned to go. “Did you forget? I’m no longer an FBI agent.”
As he opened the door, she said, “It seems I’m always trying to thank you.”
He couldn’t look back as he shut the door.
When Vail got off the elevator in the lobby, he walked past the guard, who was speaking on the telephone in a panicked voice: “Send an ambulance to the federal building right away. Someone has fallen from a sixth-story window. Hurry.”