After adjusting his glasses, he gave me his name again, pronouncing Griswold like a puzzle answer on a TV game show. We traded phone numbers as Warner talked.
“After you left Jeremy Beatty tonight, he was out of his trailer carrying a gear bag within minutes.” She made that sound extraordinary, but Beatty had told me he was going out to the airfield tonight. “You weren’t half a mile away when he rode his motorcycle up a ramp onto the truck bed and strapped it down.”
“You were tracking me?”
“I’m saying it wasn’t long. It was planned. He was out of Wunderland eight minutes after you left. Are you hearing me?”
“I’m hearing you, but waiting for your point. Beatty didn’t know I was stopping by. He was packing, getting ready to go out to an airfield and a new job.”
“That’s hard for us to believe.”
I tried to make sense of that then skipped over it. “Tell me what you have on Beatty. Tell me why you’re here.”
“Special Agent Grale, I want to ask you something. You’re a SABT, special agent bomb tech, and highly trained. You’ve got quite a reputation. Could you build bombs like the two used tonight?”
“Probably.” I stared at her. “I left the bomb scene because my supervisor said you had something urgent. What have you got?”
When she stalled, I slid my chair back and got ready to stand.
“Please don’t leave yet,” she said. “How would Beatty get to this airfield?”
“It’s north of Indian Wells, approximately two miles beyond the Mercury cutoff. I can forward the directions he texted me.”
“So he would take 95 North?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not what he did.”
“Okay, tell me. I can’t do the rest of this game. I’m going to ask again, what have you got?”
“He drove toward Bar Alagara and we followed but lost him. He made a series of evasive moves, ran stop signs, reversed course, raced through yellow lights—my squad isn’t trained for that.”
“What are they trained for?”
That came out harsh. That was my anger again at the bombings and being pulled into the office.
“Criminal investigation,” she said.
“With a computer and a mouse, right? They’re all good at driving a mouse, just not so good with vehicles. I was driving slowly along Lake Mead Boulevard. If Beatty was following me, he was driving slowly.”
“You were driving slowly. We saw that. Does that mean you were waiting for him?”
“Excuse me? You’re telling me you were following me and then followed Beatty as well. That’s what I’m hearing. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Were you always going to the party? Were you invited?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Was I invited?”
“Were you?”
It hit me, and it was unbelievable. I answered slowly. It was possible the DOD had nothing connecting me to the party. But if they had questions about me, why didn’t they tell Venuti? He would have cleared it up.
“It was my sister and brother-in-law’s annual party. I try to get there every year.”
She looked at Griswold then back at me.
“Your sister is Melissa Kern?”
I shook my head. “My sister is dead.”
She must have read the emotion crossing my face. She bowed her head. She looked at Griswold then back at me.
“We’ve made a terrible mistake, and I apologize.”
“My brother-in-law, Jim Kern, was one of the pilots killed tonight. Melissa was my sister and only sibling. I found her body and the body of my nephew. My niece is in emergency surgery right now. After his discharge, Beatty had a hard time and Jim got me involved, trying to help him. Beatty used to regularly send texts that sounded suicidal, like one I got last night. I hadn’t seen one like it in over a year, and since he didn’t return my calls or texts, I stopped by before going to the party.”
She shook her head, then found the grace to look me in the eye.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m an idiot.”
“Just bring me in. If I’m wrong about Jeremy, I need to know what I’ve missed seeing.”
I pulled the memory stick Beatty gave me and slid it across to her.
“That’s video Beatty took of you with a small drone he owns. He didn’t know the surveillance was DOD until last night when OSI told him he was being investigated over drones he flew in Taiwan. Until they knocked on his door, he thought you were CIA.”
She looked at the memory stick and then at me with kindness in her eyes. Her voice softened and slowed.
“We have wiretaps of an angry Jeremy Beatty talking about the US Air Force. Read the transcripts we’ll send you tonight and come to your own conclusions. He harbors extreme anger over his discharge. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was turn over a year’s worth of investigation, but I didn’t see how we could ignore it. He knew the victims. He knew the party location. He was invited and declined to attend. He has knowledge of explosives.”
“Jeremy doesn’t know anything about explosives.”