Irreparable Harm (12 page)

“If you say so. OIA, that’s Office of Internal Affairs?”

“Correct.”

“Internal Affairs is investigating a commercial airline crash?”

Connelly looked at her. She watched him deciding whether he could tell her. He was trying to assess if she could help him.

She waited.

He made up his mind. “I had been in Pittsburgh investigating anonymous comments someone out of that office has been making on the internet. Someone is divulging SSI.”

“SSI?”

“Sensitive security information. Unclassified, but not for public dissemination.”

“And this SSI leak is related to the crash?”

He drained his water glass before answering. “No. I don’t think so, but there was an air marshal on that flight, so I have to be sure. Because if there is a link, the leaker just went from facing a reprimand to being fucked. Life in prison fucked, if he’s lucky. Death penalty fucked, if he’s not.”

“So what were you doing at Warner’s? And how’d you get in?”

“I imagine I got in the same way as you. Some kind resident held the door for me.” Connelly paused, then he said, “Okay. I’ll show you mine. Warner’s name popped through the SAR initiative.”

She looked at him blankly.

“Suspicious Activity Reporting. You know, ‘if you see something, say something.’”

“The thing at Wal-Mart, where they tell you to report anything unusual?”

“No way do you shop at Wal-Mart.”

It was true. She was a Target woman.

“Whatever. That spy on your neighbors program?”

“It’s not a spying program, Sasha. It’s a program designed to harness the eyes and ears of the citizenry to aid the government in responding to threats. The program crosses multiple agencies, and, in addition to asking everyday Americans to be alert, it contains a specific financial crimes component that asks bankers and others to report suspicious activities. Mostly money laundering, tax evasion, that sort of thing.”

It sounded exactly like spying on your neighbors to Sasha, but she just nodded.

“Once the victim list started coming in on the crash, we ran it through the SAR. The system flagged Angelo Calvaruso’s name.”

She interrupted. “The system? I thought there is no system—just a mishmash of different agencies’ databases that don’t talk to each other.”

Connelly nodded. “That used to be true. Since 9/11, we’ve made a lot of headway in cross-referencing information, particularly with the nationwide Guardian database. That’s how Mr. Calvaruso’s name came up. An insurance broker had submitted a tip to the Maryland database when Patriotech purchased keyman insurance on him.”

“Why?”
I
think it’s insane for a tech company to buy keyman insurance on a retired snowplow driver, but if an insurer was willing to write the policy, how could they turn around and say it’s suspect?”

“Who knows why? The notes just say the broker thought it was odd Patriotech bought keyman and life insurance, but no health insurance. Apparently the three usually come as a package. And, also, the broker noted that Mr. Calvaruso had an Italian-sounding name.”

She arched an eyebrow. “What? The Mafia?”

“The tips aren’t always of the highest quality, I’ll grant you, but information is always good to have.”

The bar was emptying out. The noise level had dropped, so she lowered her voice. “Whatever. How’d you get from Calvaruso to Warner?”

“He was listed as the contact at Patriotech. When the name popped, I called him. He had already left for the day. I hadn’t heard back from Peterson—or you, I might add. The first twenty-four hours of an investigation are make it, break it time, so I figured I’d pay Mr. Warner a personal visit at home. We were probably on the same flight, because I hadn’t been there more than a few minutes when you walked in and attacked me. Your turn. What were you really doing at Warner’s apartment?”

He moved his water glass two inches to the left so it lined up exactly with her bottle.

“Attacked you. Nice revisionist history, Agent Connelly.” Sasha took her time phrasing her story. She wanted to come across as forthright and open without actually revealing too much.

“Okay. Something about Calvaruso didn’t sit right with me. The news reports said he was a retired city laborer who had been working as a consultant for a defense tech company. I mean, that’s strange right there. Then, plaintiff’s counsel didn’t name him as the class rep. For a lot of boring legal strategy reasons, he was the obvious choice. It just seemed weird. So, I had a choice. Call and bother his widow or try to get more info about him some other way. I figured I would try his employer first. I spoke to Warner, who agreed to send me a copy of Mr. Calvaruso’s personnel file.”

She stopped to finish her beer. Put the bottle back on the table two inches off center of Connelly’s glass and watched his face. His right eye twitched but he resisted the urge to move it.

“He just offered to send you the file?”

“I have my ways.” She smiled.

“What? You reach through the phone and punch him in the nose?”

She rolled her eyes but continued, “I suggested it would be better to give it to me informally than to make me get a subpoena.”

Now he arched an eyebrow. “You think you could get a subpoena for that?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Doesn’t matter.
He
thought I could.”

“So, you decided to pick up the file in person?”

She took a minute. Replayed the voicemail in her head. “No. Not long after I got your message, I got one from Warner, calling from his cell phone. He wanted to … actually, I think he was asking me out. Said he was coming to Pittsburgh for Calvaruso’s funeral and maybe we could get together. Then, there was a knock on his door and I heard, I guess, an altercation.”

“What kind of altercation?”

Sasha looked at him. “I think I heard him getting beaten to death.”

She took her phone out, called her voicemail system, skipped over the eight new messages that had piled up in her box, and retrieved Warner’s message. Then, she hit the button to turn on the speakerphone and laid the phone on the table. She kept the volume low, so they both leaned in and hunched over the phone to hear. They sat there in silence and listened to Warner’s recorded screams.

Just like a black box, she thought, pressing 7 to save the message. She turned off the phone and looked back at Connelly.

He was still leaning forward, tense. Ready to spring into action. “Irwin had his own employee killed?”

Sasha shook her head. “I have no idea. Sounds that way.”

The cell phone rang. They both jumped.

She glanced at the display. It was Naya. She answered, and Naya started to talk immediately. Sasha listened for a long time. She didn’t interrupt. She glanced once at Connelly, then said, “Okay. I’m leaving now.”

She hung up and looked across the table at the federal agent. “Noah Peterson is dead.”

Chapter 16

Jerry Irwin’s house, Potomac, Maryland

The two giants in Irwin’s study stared at the geometric pattern on the rug. They didn’t want to meet his eye. He glared at them from behind the glass and steel desk. He’d been asleep when they’d called to tell him they’d killed Warner by mistake and had failed to retrieve his files.

Now, he was wide awake and irritated. His mind was a wonderful machine, but it needed to be babied, like a classic car or an orchid or some shit. He needed ten hours of sleep to perform at peak efficiency. He could not afford a sleep deficit. Not this week.

“I hired you to take care of problems, not cause them,” he said.

The older one nodded his agreement. Neither spoke. The dead kid had a skull like an overripe melon. They hadn’t even hit him that hard, but they’d learned in their line of work not to make excuses with their clients. Very bad men had little patience for explanations. This angry nerd was not their usual client, but they figured the safest course was to treat him like any other criminal and stay quiet.

Irwin sighed and dialed his partner’s number, still glaring at the men in front of him, who continued to focus on the rug.

“It’s me,” he said. “My goons got overzealous and killed the guy without getting the files out of him. A woman lawyer called the main number today and spoke to him. She was from some firm in Pittsburgh, but my half-retarded receptionist can’t remember her name or the name of the firm.”

“It’s probably the associate, McCandless. Don’t worry,” his partner reassured him, “the company’s lead outside lawyer died in a tragic accident tonight. They’ll be scrambling to deal with that for the rest of the week.”

Irwin didn’t want the power balance to shift, and it would if he didn’t clean up his own mess. “Tragic. Even so, I am going to send these morons to Pittsburgh to tie up loose ends. McCandless? What’s her first name?”

“Sasha. See if they can get something out of her before they kill her, why don’t you?”

Irwin gritted his teeth. “Right.”

He clicked off the phone.

“Okay, assholes” he said. “Redemption time. You’re going to Pittsburgh. Find a chick lawyer named Sasha McCandless. Listen carefully now. Find out what she knows. If she has files, get them from her. Got it? Don’t kill her and then tell me you’re sorry you didn’t get the files. Do you think you can handle that, you mental midgets?”

The younger guy glanced sidelong at his partner, looking for a signal that he could start pummeling Irwin.

But the older guy straightened up and said, “Yes. We’ve got it. You know there’s an extra fee for travel, right?”

Irwin cocked his head, started to object, and then decided it wasn’t worth it. “Whatever. Fine. Just don’t fuck it up this time. Now get out. I have to get some sleep.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Sixty miles away, Sasha and Connelly were traveling north on Interstate 70. They’d just passed the exit for the Antietam Battlefield. In a few minutes they’d be through Hagerstown and would be crossing over the Mason-Dixon Line from Maryland into Pennsylvania.

“Did you know the Mason-Dixon had nothing to do with slavery?” Connelly said. “It was laid to settle a property dispute between the Calvert family of Maryland and the Penn family of Pennsylvania.”

Sasha glanced at him in the rental car’s rearview mirror. It was the first time he’d spoken since the car had been delivered to the hotel. He’d tried to convince her that Peterson wouldn’t be any less dead if they waited and took the first flight out in the morning, but she finally got him to understand she was driving back with or without him. He’d blustered and threatened to arrest her, but, in the end, he’d yanked open the rear passenger door and flung himself and his bag across the seat.

She hadn’t much cared whether he’d been sleeping back there or just sulking. The silence had been welcome.

Now, she met Connelly’s eye in the mirror and said, “Is that so?”

“Mmm-hmm. American history major.”

Several minutes later, the road changed from smooth blacktop to bumpy and cracked. Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation crews had taken over road maintenance several hundred feet before the official sign welcoming hapless travelers to the Commonwealth and it showed.

“Welcome to Pennsylvania,” she told him as they were jostled along.

Connelly forced a laugh. They drove in silence for a spell. Then he said, “You don’t think it was an accident, do you?”

He meant Peterson. After she’d hung up, Sasha had told him what Naya had told her. Peterson’s car was found wrapped around a tree a few blocks from his home. He’d apparently hit it at a high rate of speed and was declared dead on the scene. Everyone was assuming he’d been driving under the influence. Naya had added that the Prescott power brokers were hard at work trying to convince the coroner’s office not to run a blood alcohol test. Sasha hadn’t seen a reason to share that piece of information with the air marshal.