Closure (Jack Randall) by Randall Wood Read Free Book Online

right away. He liked to form his words first. “The man definitely had his share of enemies. From the documents in his home office I found an allotment of indictable material. His tax returns alone aren’t even close to what he filed. I found at least four cases of money laundering, and some evidence of payoffs. We managed to copy his hard-drive so I should have some good leads for the home office to track. He had just finished a big case, made himself over five million. Maybe somebody involved in that or . . .” He let it trail off. Nobody had mentioned the letter yet. They all looked at Jack.
    Jack looked around the table. “Guess I better make a phone call.”
    •      •      •
    “Deacon.” The Deputy Director was at home on his secure phone. “What do we know, Jack?”
    “Our shooter is a professional, sir, a good one.” Jack gave him the news he didn’t wish to hear. “He hid his tracks very well; we have next to nothing here.”
    “The letter?”
    “We just need one thing to confirm it.”
    “Yeah, another body.”

 
    The state of Colorado holds 19,671 inmates in its prisons.
Approximately 13,179 are repeat offenders.
    —SIX—

    “T his could be my ticket to the Post. ”
    The thought was always in the back of Danny Drake’s head, but the minute he saw the scene it resurfaced immediately. As he pecked out the story on his laptop, his mind was already working on the blanks. As far as he knew, he had been the first reporter on the scene. He’d been dating the girl in the records department at this small suburban police station for six months. They had worked out a system where if she overheard something juicy from the dispatcher, she would text him with the address. Since her desk was two feet from the dispatch room door, which never closed to let the air conditioner reach inside, she overheard a majority of the traffic. She knew it wasn’t something Chief Sanchez would like, so she kept the texts to a minimum. She knew of Danny’s ambition to work for the Washington Post someday and was starting to think he might take her with him. Danny had yet to consider that.
    What currently was occupying Danny’s mind was what he saw at the scene. He had arrived in time to see the Chief remove a large envelope from a tree. The fact that the Chief took a picture of it first raised his curiosity even more. Sanchez did not look happy with the contents, which he carefully bagged and put in his car before Danny’s fellow journalists arrived. Thinking ahead, Danny kept his mouth shut, and let all the others shout their questions at the very brief statement the Chief had made. There was no mention of the envelope, and Danny did not inquire. Everyone seemed to accept the car-jacking story without question. When his photographer had informed him he had shot everything and was going back to the office, Danny asked to borrow a camera. “Just in case, I think I’ll hang out for awhile,” he had said. After a few hours, the telephoto lens provided Danny with his first live look at Special Agent Jack Randall. Danny read the Post every day, and Jack’s picture had been a regular one in the past year. Why was the FBI here? Why would they send one of their best agents, and their own crime scene investigators to Florida on such short notice for a flubbed car-jacking? What was in the envelope? Sure, the victim was one of the rich and famous, but why did he warrant this kind of attention from the FBI? Too many holes in this story, Danny thought. But if he could fill them before somebody else did, he may be able to get out of this paper and into a real one. He checked his story for errors and with a keystroke sent it to his editor. Now, who should he call first?
    •      •      •
    Sam lay in his daughter’s bed looking at the ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stars that he had spent an afternoon pasting up shined like newly discovered constellations. He had made an effort at a Big Dipper and