“He was trained in the air force.”
“Only about the ordnance the drones delivered, so you’re really stretching it.” I paused, took her in again, then said, “Are you saying you were worried about his state of mind before there was a bombing?”
“That’s right, and we’re turning everything over tonight.” She did something I didn’t see coming. She reached across the table and touched my fingers, then pulled her hand back. “I’m so sorry, so truly sorry for your loss.”
“Is there any hard evidence on Beatty?”
She didn’t answer.
“Is there any hard evidence?”
“Not yet.”
Desperation mixed with grief crept into my voice. “You should have told my supervisor that you had questions about me. I should be out there.”
“I see that now.” She glanced at Griswold, who was cleaning his glasses again and wouldn’t look at me. “Any questions about you are my doing, not my team’s,” she said.
I didn’t care if it was her or her team or whatever. I needed to be at the Alagara right now and wasn’t. She was still talking, and I wasn’t hearing her.
“But not about Beatty,” she said. “He needs to be questioned. Everything we have, transcripts, everything—the Joint Terrorism Task Force will have it all before dawn. I should tell you that he canceled his phone tonight.”
I pulled out my cell, called Beatty, and got a recording saying the phone number was no longer in service.
“When you saw him earlier, did he tell you that he was cutting his phone off?”
“No.”
“Yet you were kind enough to drive out and check on him after you had left several messages for him. Don’t you think it would be basic human decency to tell you the number you’ve been calling all these years will stop working in a couple of hours?”
I nodded at her. I agreed. I was surprised.
“That’s all I have, all we have. We’ve been working a stolen blueprint investigation with OSI, and we’re swamped with cybertheft. That’s been my whole life the past six months. Beatty’s not implicated in our Taiwan problem, but his job broker could be. That broker, Edward Bahn, is a scuzzbag, and the man who paid Bahn is a black-market heavyweight. I hate to turn everything over before we’ve moved on our investigation, but there seemed to be too much to ignore.”
“Maybe he disconnected his phone due to your surveillance and after OSI officers questioned him last night.”
“Maybe he did, and it just happened to coincide with the hour of a terrorist attack.”
I registered that and stared as my phone rang.
“That’s my supervisor. We’ll go through everything you turn over as soon as we get it. For what it’s worth, Beatty misses the air force and thinks of those days as the best in his life. Check out his haircut.”
“You don’t have an answer for him canceling his phone, do you?”
“Only that he’s trying to shake your surveillance.”
“Ahead of an attack.”
I didn’t touch that, walked out, and talked to Venuti only long enough to tell him I was on my way upstairs to his office.
6
“Send me back to the bomb scene.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Not yet, headquarters is . . .”
“Screw headquarters, Dan. I belong out there and you know it. I just dealt with the DOD farce. Send me back now.”
My anger was intense, and I interrupted as soon as I understood what he was planning.
“You’re going to shuffle me off to look at a van two detectives have already looked at that’s about to get hauled to our yard. You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Grale, listen to me. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry for you. I don’t know how you’re doing it right now, but I can’t send you back yet. Headquarters doesn’t want you at the Alagara.”
“Headquarters doesn’t want me there? Why would that be? Did someone here say what the DOD brought in needs to be looked at closely? You’re the only one they’ve talked to, right? So what did you say? That you’d backwater me somewhere while I get looked at for some asinine reason?”
“The Hullabaloo driver has been identified as a twenty-seven-year-old Hispanic named Juan Menderes. Presumably fled. I’ll text you the address for the van. The Las Vegas PD detectives there will wait for you. Go there. That’s an order. You’re on Menderes until we get this sorted out.”
“It’s already sorted out.”
“There’s no other way, Grale. You need to go.”
“I don’t get it, Dan. I don’t get any of this. I’m needed at Alagara, not tracking this guy down.”
“This is not a debate.”
“What this is, is wrong.” I pointed a finger at him. “I never belonged at a crime scene more than this one.”