Chinese Burn Page 5

  Jobert had found a table at the back of the small conference room that they were using for the interviews. He waited and he watched. His phone rang with the chorus from Beyonce's Empire State of Mind. "Damn kids," he muttered, thinking that his 12 year old boy was the most likely culprit, but he'd probably have more chance of getting his younger daughter to change it back.

  "Jobert," he answered, his annoyance showing through in the clipped response.

  "Who bit your ass," said Mart Wallace at the other end of the line.

  "Damn kids been playing with the phone again, it rings with some dumb song now."

  "Good job that isn't a secure agency phone..."

  "Hell no, I let them use it sometimes, mixes up the call list. Damn thing always comes back doing unexpected shit. Anyways, I'm sure you didn't ring to talk about my parental discipline issues. What gives?"

  "A Detroit traffic cop called in a spot on our target."

  "Yeah? Where?"

  "I96, pretty close to Detroit."

  "Detroit? What the hell did she go there for?"

  Wallace's shrug was almost audible down the line.

  "We know anything else?" continued Jobert.

  "No, I got the guy's name and precinct, you wanna talk to him?"

  "Do bears shit in the woods?" He took the details, finished his coffee in one gulp and then stretched. He rose from the seat and walked over to where the two detectives were conducting the interviews. One of them was just finishing up with the barman, and Jobert cut in before the next interview could start.

  "What you got so far?" he asked.

  The detective flipped through his notes. "Not much, the girl at reception saw her leave the restaurant after breakfast and head up the stairs to her room. Then a couple of minutes later — if that, she wasn't sure on the timing — she comes flying back down the stairs, hauls butt down the main corridor and out through a fire exit at the end. And that was the last she saw of her." He paused, flicked back another couple of pages. "Then I got the guy that drives the courtesy bus who was pulling into the kerb out front here, who thinks that he saw her run to a white compact, and high-tail it out of the northern exit."

  "We got the car, it was a rental, and they’re already looking for it."

  "Ok."

  "Stay on it, see if you can corroborate her movements any further."

  The cop nodded, and Jobert turned away to head up the stairs to the room that Sam Blackett had so briefly used. When he got to the doorway he hesitated on the threshold and watched for a few moments. Two white-clad officers were crouched at their tasks, one by the television, the other inspecting a pair of shoes further into the room. After he had stood there for about 30 seconds, the closer of the two looked up.

  He smiled and waved Jobert in. "We've done the main inspection, there's no damage you can do now, everything is bagged and tagged and headed to the labs except for those shoes." He nodded towards the bed, where Sam's belongings were laid out in a series of clear plastic bags, each item neatly labeled.

  "That's it?" asked Jobert. "Everything she left here?"

  "Everything that was in the room," replied the officer.

  "No computer? She's some kind of journalist; you'd think there would be a computer."

  "Maybe she took it with her."

  Jobert nodded, eyes wandering over the rest of the possessions. There was nothing remarkable, just clothes, a battered grey backpack, a wash bag, a pair of training shoes, some sandals and a couple of swimsuits. What was remarkable was what was missing. There was no laptop, no camera, no phone, no tablet - none of the modern toys that someone like Blackett would need to keep her social media updated. Jobert turned away, and pulled out his phone. He waited until he was in the hall to make the call.

  "Wallace?"

  "Yeah, what's up now?"

  "We're still all over Blackett's electronic comms, right?"

  "Sure, why?"

  "Well, either she hung around long enough to pick up her laptop, phone, camera and every other electronic toy she owns, or someone else did it for her - either way I want to know every single character and word uttered on any channel that she's connected to... oh, and while we're at it, get the NSA to keyword search all mobile comms for everything in her database file."

  "Jeez, that's a big ask, not sure I can pull that one off without raising flags around the building."

  Jobert considered for a moment. Wallace was right, there was a risk of drawing attention to this thing, and it was way too early for that, he had no handle on what was going on yet.

  "Ok, do what you can, low-key. What's that guy’s name you did that German job with over there?"

  "Pearson."

  "Right, Pearson, he owes us a favor or three."

  "I'll see what I can do."

  "Aw'right, this time I really am headed for Detroit." Jobert hung up, and walked thoughtfully down the corridor. Slowly his pace quickened. When he got to the conference room he pulled aside the detective who had been conducting the interviews without waiting for a gap. The man came slightly reluctantly. He was interviewing a very pretty blond girl.

  "The receptionist, you interviewed her yourself?" he asked.

  "Sure."

  "Did she notice if Blackett was carrying anything?"

  The detective flicked through his notes again. "No, she had no bags, nothing in her hands, looks like she had just run straight out of breakfast."

  "Check that with everyone you can, start with the bus guy. I need to be absolutely sure that she left this hotel with nothing."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I'm going to be out for a while, if you need me, call the number I gave you."

  The detective nodded, and turned quickly back to where the blond was waiting.

  Sam Blackett had cut and shaved her hair back to not much more than bristle, adding some scissor-cut, pixie sideburns that she hoped made it look cute rather than severe. She had then set about dying the remnants of her once glorious hair blond. It was a painful task, and there wasn't anything like enough water. She was just finishing up the final rinse when she heard the unmistakable sound of the hammer going back on a pistol.

  "Hands on your head and turn to face me. Slowly," said a woman's voice.

  Sam put down the coke bottle of water and felt for the shirt that she had been using for a towel.

  "Slowly."

  "There's water in my eyes, I can't see."

  "Just do it gently, and then put the towel down and your hands on your head."

  Sam wiped her face, and then did as she was told. She turned, slowly, to find she was looking down the black barrel of a battered semi-automatic pistol.

  "Afternoon, lady," said the voice from behind the weapon.

  "Hello," replied Sam, as calmly as she could manage.

  "I see you been helpin' yourself to some of my stuff."

  "I was going to pay for it," replied Sam.

  The woman nodded. Sam took in the hazy blue eyes, with a faint watery sheen. They were blank and unemotional, and deep set in a creased, tanned face, mostly hidden behind a thick, untidy growth of nondescript brown hair.

  "Of course you was," she said. "So maybe you'd like to make that contribution now."

  "I don't have much," said Sam, "no bank cards or anything, just some cash... it's all I've got to survive on..." she'd be all right if the woman just took the twenty in her pocket and didn't find the rest in her sock.

  "You don't look like you living in the street, lady."

  "I wasn't this morning, I had some bad luck today, this is all I have now." Sam pulled out the cash from her pocket. "I was going to leave you ten bucks for the water," she said. "That's already inside on your bed."

  "It is?"

  "Please, go check."

  "This better not be some kind of trick," said the woman, adjusting her grip on the handgun.

  "No trick. And I have food, you can have it too..." she offered the CVS bag with the cookies and nuts.

  The woman looked at her for a
moment, clearly considering her options. They were extensive, thought Sam. She braced her abdominal muscles for whatever came next. She wasn't going down without a fight.

  Then the woman backed away towards the building, up to the window. She glanced in and then nodded. "Ok, I guess you might be for real, but how come you're up here, messin' with my stuff? No one climbs all them stairs without a reason, I been safe up here nearly two years now and no one came up here." The handgun shifted in her grip again, but the barrel remained leveled at a point just above and between Sam's eyes. She looked like she had some experience handling weapons.

  Sam glanced down at the woman's combat shirt and trousers; both looked like they had been issued in the Gulf War. The first one, a couple of decades and change ago. "I just got back from abroad, things didn't go well for me and I lost a job I thought I had. And then this morning everything I owned got stolen from my hotel room. The cops weren't interested and I had to use most of the cash I had left to pay the bill and this is all I've got now. I've never been on the streets before; I climbed because it made me feel safer. I can see things coming better when I'm up high."

  "You didn't see me coming."

  "No..." Sam hesitated. The gun was still pointed at her. She needed to make a connection with this woman, and she was going to have to take a risk to do it. She hated talking about it, but... "My father would have been disappointed; he thought he taught me better."

  "He was military?"

  "Marine Corps. Sergeant."

  "What happened?"

  "He didn't come back from Iraq. They wouldn't tell us what happened."

  "Shit, man. I was there in 1991."

  "This was the second war, in 2003."

  "And your mother?"

  "She's alive, but she took it hard." She was just about over it now, thought Sam, but the more limited truth served her purpose better.

  The woman nodded and dropped the handgun. "Let's have a look in the bag."

  Sam handed it over.

  The woman glanced inside. "All right, let's eat. I'll make us some coffee."

  Paul Jobert eased his weary body onto the bar stool at the Holiday Inn, and waved the bartender over. "A Bud if you got one."

  "Sure," replied the woman. She reached into the fridge, opened the bottle and placed it in front of Jobert.

  "Thanks," he said, and pulled out his phone. There was one missed call, and he recognized Wallace's cell number. He hit dial. "It's me," he said, when Wallace picked up.

  "You see the cop," asked Wallace.

  "Yeah, he didn't know anything. He remembered her face well enough, told me she was a great looking girl, but I think we already knew that. Otherwise, nothing, she motored past him and looked a bit tense so he gave the car a good look for a busted taillight or something, but the car was clean and 'she looked too hot to be in trouble' as he put it."

  "Those were his words?"

  "Those were his words."

  "Hell, those Detroit cops should come and do our job for a while; it's always the hot ones that are trouble."

  Jobert smiled, despite himself. "Next problem is to find someone ranking pretty high in Detroit PD that will give us advance notice if she gets picked up there."

  "How are we going to do that?"

  "You're going to do some research for me."

  "Right. I am, am I?" said Wallace wearily. "It's going to cost us a favor."

  "We probably have the kind of information someone could use to put away one big score and get his ass into where the action is..."

  "And I'm going to find this information for you to give them?"

  "Uh-huh, thought you could rifle through the Feds files when you get a minute and see if there's anything they are working that he can jump in on," said Jobert.

  "You really are determined to get yourself busted all the way back to Private First Class and spend the next couple of decades through to retirement cleaning Langley's toilets aren't you?"

  "They can't do a whole lot worse to me than they already have."

  "Really, you think? After how many years in the Agency, that's what you think?"

  Jobert didn't reply. It looked like he'd be rifling through the Fed's files himself when he got back to Virginia.

  "What about the hotel, anything come out of those interviews?" said Wallace, eventually.

  Jobert ran through his conversation with the detective that was doing the interviews.

  "Too big a coincidence for me," replied Wallace. "I'd say we have another player."

  "Maybe the murderer, looking to finish the job and close the circle. Trouble with that theory is that we have no motive and no freakin' idea what one might be."

  "Ah, and there I might be able to help you, I did some research on Mr Ravert."

  "Yeah?"

  "Yeah, turns out our man is a defense contractor."

  "What? Jesus H Christ. So what the hell was he doing in China?"

  "I can't answer that question, but when we do, we might just find a motive. It might be something you want to look into..."

  "What else do we know about him? Any background on the company?"

  "Ravert and his partner run a small custom chip manufacturing business — DeChip. They have an office near the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Let's see, what have we got..."

  Jobert could hear the sound of paper as Wallace flicked through his notes on the other end of the line.

  "... married his high school sweetheart..." continued Wallace, "but nothing out of the ordinary, no red flags. Just that he was something of a prodigy when he was younger, graduated from MIT a couple of years early, fast-tracked by Intel but left after five years. He set up this business right after that, fifteen years ago with a guy called Terry New. It looks like they do a bunch of stuff for different people, mostly custom control processors for manufacturing. There's some auto stuff here, no surprise given where they are based... and then there's this contract with Northrop Grumman. They supply control boards and processors for their latest drones."

  "Jesus."

  "Yeah, so we're not talking about work on some rescue helicopter, or a troop carrier, we're talking about the good shit."

  "Suddenly, this seems like it might be more important than just closing our circle with Ms. Blackett."

  "You want me to roust out the rest of the building?"

  "Not until we need them, I can follow this up right here and right now. Let me talk to New first, you got a number or an address?'

  "Sure, both," replied Wallace, and recited it.

  Jobert jotted them down in his notes, "OK, that can't be far from here. Nice work. I'll get on to it right away; let's hope there's a perfectly good explanation for why one of our top engineers with access to high-level data and manufacturing intelligence was murdered in China."

  "And if not?"

  "Then we need to find out what the hell he was doing there. Stay tight, I'll get back to you."

  Jobert ended the call, and dialed the number for DeChip. It rang twice before it was answered by a sweet mid-Western voice. Jobert asked to talk to Terry New.

  "Can I ask what it concerns?"

  "Ann Arbor PD want to have a chat about his partner Roger Ravert's unfortunate recent demise, it's just routine background stuff, but it would be good to get it out of the way as quickly as possible."

  The line went dead. Jobert waited. He was about to end the call and ring back, when the sweet voice returned.

  "Mr New will speak to you now."

  "Thanks," said Jobert, barely finishing the word before there was a click and the background hum on the line changed slightly.

  "Terry New, how can I help?" said a much deeper voice.

  "Thanks for taking the call, Mr New," said Jobert. "I'm sorry for your loss, I'm sure you knew Roger Ravert very well."

  "Yes, thank you, we were friends before we were business partners. The whole affair is terribly sad."

  "I don't need a great deal of your time, Mr New; we just need to go through some straight-f
orward questions. As soon as we can get it done, I can leave you alone."

  "I'm on my way out of the door now, but... if you can get here quickly, I can see you tonight."

  "I'm already on my way." Jobert hung up before New could change his mind, finished the rest of his beer and then headed through to where the two cops were packing up after completing the interviews.

  "Anything else we can help you with, sir?" said the detective who had talked to him earlier.

  "I need a uniform to come with me," said Jobert. "I'm going to interview Ravert's partner and I need him to think I'm local PD."

  The two cops glanced at each other.

  "We don't need to tell any lies, if I go in with a uniform they won't even ask for ID."

  "Where is it? I can get a black and white to meet you there."

  "Thanks," said Jobert and recited the address. "Tell 'em to wait a coupla hundred yards short of the actual offices, to the east."

  "They'll be there, sir."

  Jobert nodded, and headed for the door.

  Chapter 5

  Jobert pulled up behind the patrol car — parked right where it was supposed to be. He got out, paused to loosen his tie in the still heat of the late afternoon, and then walked to the driver's window, where he flashed his ID. "I need it to look like I'm with you," he said, to the two helpful, enquiring faces that peered back at him. The word appeared to have gone round. "You can drive," he added, as he got in the back.

  "I'm Perkins," said the driver, he jabbed a thumb to his right, "and that's Chomicz."

  Jobert nodded. "You know where we're going?"

  "Sure," said Perkins, as they moved off.

  They pulled up outside the offices of DeChip in a leafy, light industrial park. They were about half a mile from the University of Michigan campus. There was plenty of space so Jobert got Perkins to park close to the front door. He was conscious that their arrival might well be watched, so he didn't stop to take too much of a look before he got out... but he didn't rush either. There was a silver Mercedes-Benz two-seater closest to the door that looked like it might belong to New.